Well, two exams down six to go. The first exam we had was this Monday. Housekeeping came in and evaluated our apartment. We had to reach a level of cleanliness, according to their criteria, that would allow them to NOT charge us for a cleaning service over the holidays. Well, we passed very nicely, thank you very much. The scale ran as follows: Filthy, Dirty, Okay, Clean, Very Clean. Our kitchen rated "very clean" on every count except for the floor. The floor rated "Clean". I could understand that because all I did was sweep and then rub it with a paper towel or two because it looked like the scabrous mop that housekeeping provided would spread cholera better than it would clean the floor. Every room in our apartment rated "clean" on every count except for one room, but he knows who he is. I wouldn't know how they defined 'very clean' for our rooms, but the result of this successful exam is that we don't have to pay for a cleaning service. Yay: all praise for small victories.
Following hard upon this Cleaning Exam was my guitar recital. The Irish Folk Music course I am taking has a practical tutorial. You go to lectures and learn about history and famous players and stuff, but the tutorial is practice. There was a dance group, a tin-whistle group, a bodhran group, a fiddle group, a singing group, and a guitar group. There are over 100 people in the class. This was a fantastic way to really engage the students whether they wanted to be engaged or not. And there is definitely a surly group of young men in the back who test each teacher's patience with their little reindeer games. The recital was well attended, as every member of the audience was also a performer. The singers were able to do a few ornaments and they all could hold a tune, so that was lovely. Eoin Cougohlan is an up and coming performer on the Irish folk music scene (he's backed Emmy Lou Harris!), and he is a fantastic musician as well as a great teacher. Anyway, he was given the task of creating a recital piece for no less than 20 (twenty, that's right) Bodhrans. It was too many to have any melody instruments because any fiddle or flute would be drowned out. Coughlan chose to do an 'a capella', as it were, bodhran piece. He got them to play a 'jig' and a 'reel', or rather rhythmic patterns in 6/8 and then 4/4. He had them play different styles of the rhythms, on edge, muted, rising and falling, and flat out in the middle. He has the group alternate who was playing, and then add and subtract players to create waves of sound. It was fantastic! It was really a testament to a good teacher that he got total novices to do something so cutting edge, and so on the beat. He got them to do some pretty complicated stuff.
Well, Mr. Coughlan was also the tutor for the guitars. We played a polka, The Little Diamond, the Salamanca Reel, and the hornpipe 'Off to California'. We flat picked the Little Diamond, but Coughlan convinced an accordion player and a flute player to do the melody on the reel and the hornpipe. The reel was pretty standard backing, but we did a sort of jazz progression for the hornpipe which was very cool. I wouldn't know if we sounded good or not because I was in the band, and one never knows. I heard one person in the audience say it sounded good, so it must have been okay.
The tin whistle choirs were a little lugubrious, but they were all playing by ear, and the brave accompanist on the piano did a great job of following wherever they went with the rhythm, so it was brave effort by all involved. After the recital, I could hear bits of the tunes being played on tin whistles in the parking lot, so I think some whistle players were made in that class.
The most culturally interesting part was the dancing. The girls, of course, did a great job, and they were totally focused on their dances. The boys were another story. The audience was mostly American since most of the course is full of Americans. What Irish person would take a course called "Traditional Irish Music"? They would either have no interest at all, or by the time they got to university level, be so far beyond it. So, this was, essentially, a group of Americans. No, remember that American men generally don't dance. American undergraduate men, unless they are dancers, don't dance. I believe it is regarded as totally gay. This audience that had joyfully hooted and cheered every performance so far, totally broke down for the dancing groups that included their male classmates. The surly bunch who usually sat against the wall, egged their pals on to utterly harass the men with courage enough to get up and dance. They hooted and cat called from the back throughout the performance. They tried to distract their dancing buddies by making gestures and calling out their names. It was the most powerful example of the group pulling down members trying to break out of the drunken baseball cap mode that I have seen in a long time. It was very painful. The guys dancing on the stage mostly ignored it, but one young man caved and began to cut up in his dance, turning the hand turns into high fives, and goofing around with his steps. I was sad to see how much power these frightened young men exerted in such an insulting way. It was classic mob behavior: the hecklers were all grouped tightly together trying to draw others in to harass the dancers. I'm sure if you asked them why they were so mean, they would have perceived it as joking support. One can only hope the dancers felt it that way, but there was a vicious undertone of 'the nail that sticks up gets hammered down' and these were the dudes with the hammers.
Overall, the performances were great: it was evidence of great effort and creativity by the tutors, and great effort on the part of the students. It was a very effective way to really engage them in the process.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Text and Utopia
This post is rated AR for Academic Rambling.
I was talking with Mairead Conneely, and we were discussing utopia and landscape. She is studying how people from the Aran Islands and visitors to the Aran Islands create a literary vision of the islands that sort of matches the landscape on the ground, but in creating an identity out of writing the landscape, they create a new utopian (small letter 'a') in their minds. Often this imagined utopia is based on the past, and when the writer returns from exile, because exile helps anybody see the Old Country in Kodachrome, they see that the modern world has kept moving onwards, and the Old Country has become some undiscovered new country.
Ultimately, it's okay if the literary vision doesn't match the actual landscape, but readers, insiders and outsiders, demand some kind of authenticity (which is ultimately yet another utopian vision of what reality should (but may not) be). So the Aran Islanders create 'Synge's Seat' where the great author sat to write his plays. Of course, he sat on some kind of ledge, but there is a nice little shelter with a stone seat built up so visitors can feel some kind of landscape based communion with the author. The same thing is true in Howth, Yorkshire, for the Bronte stuff. Up on the hill is supposed to be the 'Wuthering Heights' cottage and the 'Wuthering Heights Tree' and they are both well visited and well photographed and have nothing at all to do with the texts in any way. Oh, and let's not forget that there IS NO 221B Baker Street. They had to add it in because so many people came looking for it. At the Sherlock Holmes museum on 221B Baker Street (they had to request the address), they write, 'The rooms in Mr Holmes´s apartment on the first floor are maintained just as he would have left them nearly 100 years ago!' Note the utopian use of the conditional verb in this astonishing sentence.
So readers, unfamiliar with the landscape of the text, experience the text as creating a vision of the imagined landscape. when they visit the actual place, the text landscape may be more real than the actual landscape and actually become a barrier to experiencing the place because its 'smaller than I expected' or 'dirtier than I expected'. It would seem that there could be a certain amount of Landscape Shock in the same way that people experience Culture Shock. There is a convoluted desire for 'authenticity' and yet a requirement that 'authenticity' means that the landscape conform to the imagination of the reader.
Alternatively, insiders, who know the landscape first, and then read about it, require the author's imagination to match their experience. In a way, when the author and the reader overlap enough, I think this enhances the reading because it heightens the feeling of 'authenticity' but at the same time it can inhibit the reading if the author's presentation of her imagined world does not sufficiently overlap with the reader's imagined world. This is, of course, the classic problem with adapting novels to film, but I think it reaches a certain poignancy when it is applied to experience of actual landscapes on the ground, as it were.
I think about Ben Bulben. I went out to Sligo and I 'climbed Ben Bulben's back' in my more credulous days when I thought Yeats was writing about an actual place. As a fanatical reader, I thought, 'Oh, wow. So this is Yeats.' and I looked out over the sea and came over all artistic. Having read a bit more closely, I see that Yeats never was writing about Ben Bulben, but that's okay with me. I just translated the experience into a nice hike on a sunny day with a great view of the sea.
Nevertheless, I am fascinated by the interaction of reader, writer, and landscape because they all three have a kind of Ven Diagrammatic relationship. I wonder what the center intersection is? I need to draw the picture and think about that one.
Now history texts have an interesting place in my wonderment. I mean, it is actual ground on which the text happened, in one way or another. I can go to the Manassas National Battlefield Park (known to others as the Battle of Bull Run) in Virginia, and there they have little maps with circles and arrows showing what happened. I walked out on the expanse of green field, thought about the text, and felt queasy. I have to admit, it really did heighten the emotional power of the text of the battle to have the physical connection (true or not) with the story. When I was in California attending a conference in San Diego, I hiked up to the place where they filmed M*A*S*H. There is an old rotting jeep full of weeds, and the tall flat place where they landed the helicopters. Here was a real place associated with an imaginary Korean landscape portrayed in a TV show. It made me dizzy to think about it, but it was a hot day, so maybe it was really just dehydration.
And this leads me to think about Robert Frost. (Don, if you are reading this, tell me what you think about this.) Was he not criticized for being too local? Too rooted in a specific landscape? Well, for cryin' out loud: if he was able to so vividly evoke that landscape for insiders and outsiders, I think that is a pretty big artistic achievement. I think of 'Tramps in Mudtime' or 'Birches' by Frost, and I really feel the vividness of the landscapes Frost evokes, but then I realize that the landscape of 'Birches' is located in Leverett, so I took his landscape and overlaid it on my own, and it worked. I need to find someone who is from the desert and talk with that person about Robert Frost. How does that person experience Frost's landscapes? I supposed much the same way that I experience the literature of Naughib Mahfouze...I've never been to Cairo, but I feel like I have. I have a great desire to go to Cairo and walk around like Mahfouze did. I feel like it would make his writing more vivid for me.
Maybe it is better not to have a specific location associated with an author so that one can just walk around in the generative atmosphere. Not go to Dublin and trace Bloom's steps, but just go to Dublin and walk around. I want to take Ralph to the four corners area of the Southwest because he likes the Hillerman novels, but we don't have to go to Windowrock. I think it is better just to hike around Canyon de Chelly. You know: leave the specific places in the utopia of the author's mind, and participate in the glamour of the landscape but not anchored to some imagined 'real' place that doesn't exist anyway. Yeats, ultimately, wrote the best landscape poetry because it never existed and thus is accessible to everybody. You can't get to the Isle of Innisfree. You can only look at it from the shore and imagine the evening full of linnets wings. All for the best, really.
I was talking with Mairead Conneely, and we were discussing utopia and landscape. She is studying how people from the Aran Islands and visitors to the Aran Islands create a literary vision of the islands that sort of matches the landscape on the ground, but in creating an identity out of writing the landscape, they create a new utopian (small letter 'a') in their minds. Often this imagined utopia is based on the past, and when the writer returns from exile, because exile helps anybody see the Old Country in Kodachrome, they see that the modern world has kept moving onwards, and the Old Country has become some undiscovered new country.
Ultimately, it's okay if the literary vision doesn't match the actual landscape, but readers, insiders and outsiders, demand some kind of authenticity (which is ultimately yet another utopian vision of what reality should (but may not) be). So the Aran Islanders create 'Synge's Seat' where the great author sat to write his plays. Of course, he sat on some kind of ledge, but there is a nice little shelter with a stone seat built up so visitors can feel some kind of landscape based communion with the author. The same thing is true in Howth, Yorkshire, for the Bronte stuff. Up on the hill is supposed to be the 'Wuthering Heights' cottage and the 'Wuthering Heights Tree' and they are both well visited and well photographed and have nothing at all to do with the texts in any way. Oh, and let's not forget that there IS NO 221B Baker Street. They had to add it in because so many people came looking for it. At the Sherlock Holmes museum on 221B Baker Street (they had to request the address), they write, 'The rooms in Mr Holmes´s apartment on the first floor are maintained just as he would have left them nearly 100 years ago!' Note the utopian use of the conditional verb in this astonishing sentence.
So readers, unfamiliar with the landscape of the text, experience the text as creating a vision of the imagined landscape. when they visit the actual place, the text landscape may be more real than the actual landscape and actually become a barrier to experiencing the place because its 'smaller than I expected' or 'dirtier than I expected'. It would seem that there could be a certain amount of Landscape Shock in the same way that people experience Culture Shock. There is a convoluted desire for 'authenticity' and yet a requirement that 'authenticity' means that the landscape conform to the imagination of the reader.
Alternatively, insiders, who know the landscape first, and then read about it, require the author's imagination to match their experience. In a way, when the author and the reader overlap enough, I think this enhances the reading because it heightens the feeling of 'authenticity' but at the same time it can inhibit the reading if the author's presentation of her imagined world does not sufficiently overlap with the reader's imagined world. This is, of course, the classic problem with adapting novels to film, but I think it reaches a certain poignancy when it is applied to experience of actual landscapes on the ground, as it were.
I think about Ben Bulben. I went out to Sligo and I 'climbed Ben Bulben's back' in my more credulous days when I thought Yeats was writing about an actual place. As a fanatical reader, I thought, 'Oh, wow. So this is Yeats.' and I looked out over the sea and came over all artistic. Having read a bit more closely, I see that Yeats never was writing about Ben Bulben, but that's okay with me. I just translated the experience into a nice hike on a sunny day with a great view of the sea.
Nevertheless, I am fascinated by the interaction of reader, writer, and landscape because they all three have a kind of Ven Diagrammatic relationship. I wonder what the center intersection is? I need to draw the picture and think about that one.
Now history texts have an interesting place in my wonderment. I mean, it is actual ground on which the text happened, in one way or another. I can go to the Manassas National Battlefield Park (known to others as the Battle of Bull Run) in Virginia, and there they have little maps with circles and arrows showing what happened. I walked out on the expanse of green field, thought about the text, and felt queasy. I have to admit, it really did heighten the emotional power of the text of the battle to have the physical connection (true or not) with the story. When I was in California attending a conference in San Diego, I hiked up to the place where they filmed M*A*S*H. There is an old rotting jeep full of weeds, and the tall flat place where they landed the helicopters. Here was a real place associated with an imaginary Korean landscape portrayed in a TV show. It made me dizzy to think about it, but it was a hot day, so maybe it was really just dehydration.
And this leads me to think about Robert Frost. (Don, if you are reading this, tell me what you think about this.) Was he not criticized for being too local? Too rooted in a specific landscape? Well, for cryin' out loud: if he was able to so vividly evoke that landscape for insiders and outsiders, I think that is a pretty big artistic achievement. I think of 'Tramps in Mudtime' or 'Birches' by Frost, and I really feel the vividness of the landscapes Frost evokes, but then I realize that the landscape of 'Birches' is located in Leverett, so I took his landscape and overlaid it on my own, and it worked. I need to find someone who is from the desert and talk with that person about Robert Frost. How does that person experience Frost's landscapes? I supposed much the same way that I experience the literature of Naughib Mahfouze...I've never been to Cairo, but I feel like I have. I have a great desire to go to Cairo and walk around like Mahfouze did. I feel like it would make his writing more vivid for me.
Maybe it is better not to have a specific location associated with an author so that one can just walk around in the generative atmosphere. Not go to Dublin and trace Bloom's steps, but just go to Dublin and walk around. I want to take Ralph to the four corners area of the Southwest because he likes the Hillerman novels, but we don't have to go to Windowrock. I think it is better just to hike around Canyon de Chelly. You know: leave the specific places in the utopia of the author's mind, and participate in the glamour of the landscape but not anchored to some imagined 'real' place that doesn't exist anyway. Yeats, ultimately, wrote the best landscape poetry because it never existed and thus is accessible to everybody. You can't get to the Isle of Innisfree. You can only look at it from the shore and imagine the evening full of linnets wings. All for the best, really.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Digestive Biscuits
Anne, you asked about those cookies a few posts ago. Well, Digestive Biscuits are like Graham Crackers, only better. They are both food and medication. They are the only biscuits at the Dromroe Village Store that is represented by TWO rows: all the rest have only one because every student with a brain cell left will need a package quick to hand.
Here is my study aid. Sweet and crumbly, they absorb tea like little heavenly sponges.
Oh, thou treat of angles, biscuit made from manna, encompassing all the comfort of hearth, home, and love all pressed into a little floury round of ersatz joy.
When dark of night descends and the reading never ends,
When my love is far from me and all I have is steaming tea
for comfort in the long cold night of reading with my failing sight,
Digestive Biscuits fill the void, and I could march, alone, on Troy.
(who's been reading a lot of Yeats and ancient Irish poetry? Me! Me!)
Here is my study aid. Sweet and crumbly, they absorb tea like little heavenly sponges.
Oh, thou treat of angles, biscuit made from manna, encompassing all the comfort of hearth, home, and love all pressed into a little floury round of ersatz joy.
When dark of night descends and the reading never ends,
When my love is far from me and all I have is steaming tea
for comfort in the long cold night of reading with my failing sight,
Digestive Biscuits fill the void, and I could march, alone, on Troy.
(who's been reading a lot of Yeats and ancient Irish poetry? Me! Me!)
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Narrative
Please excuse me while I post notes to myself. This idea has been on my mind and I have to get it down in text where I will find it again, but if my Erudite Readers might weigh in on the topic, that would be helpful, otherwise, I will have to email you to ask you about this. So, Erudite Reader, what do you think of the power of narrative?
It is clear that telling stories is how human beings make sense of the world. We create narratives to make sense of patterns and to remember important things about the world and about ourselves. So if narrative is a natural human way to learn, how can we use this powerful predisposition? It seems to me that we need to include the idea of narrative at several levels of learning. At the highest meta-level, there are the stories we tell about ourselves to create our identities as teachers and as students. Okay, we do that spontaneously anyway cuz we love to tell stories about ourselves. But at a more abstract level, curriculum is sort of a narrative of a discipline. Thus, the order in which we take a series of courses is a kind of narrative. Within a course, the order of topics is a kind of narrative about the course content, and then within each lecture there is a narrative that is the story of the lecture.
We hate it when a narrative is incoherent or boring. We hate it because it is confusing. When I go to a lecture that is jumping all over the place, I find it very very hard to learn that content because I have no way to make a pattern out of it. A good lecture has a narrative line to it that will hold all the details together for me. Because, as a novice, these are all new stories for me, it is really important that these stories make sense! The exam is a time for me to tell the story back to the professor to see if I learned the story. As a student, I realize that the order of the lecture is also a really important narrative line for me. In a few of my classes, there have been several different lecturers, and the topics have been unrelated to each other. I find it very confusing to identify themes and keep the narrative straight when on Wednesday we hear about 19 century dance traditions, Thursday we learn about the Irish harp tradition in the 18th century, and the following Wednesday we hear about the 20th century Irish piano tradition. I closed my notebook today after hearing about Ceili Bands and vamping pianos, and I thought to myself: I wish I had a narrative. This class feels like a bulleted list, and I would very much like to have a paragraph. I mean, I know bulleted lists are clear, but it seems that it predisposes one to memorize facts as discrete units. If the course had a narrative flow, then one could more easily make connections and create an analytical synthesis of the ideas that might create a coherent whole.
In my Folklore class, when the teacher is just lecturing off her bulleted list, there is a lot of background noise in the slightly disengaged room. However, all these apparently disengaged students are utterly silent, motionless, and utterly focused when stops to tell a story. The change in the room is tangible! I wonder very much, if one spoke to these students a year from now. if they will remember the stories or the content of the course? I'm betting on the stories.
I remember Robin Lightner said that there was a chapter in the pscyh text that she uses which seems like a bulleted list of topics. I think she said (correct me if I am remembering this wrong, Robin) that students had a hard time remembering the stuff from this chapter.
I think that when I do my next course design, and I will be redesigning every course I teach, you can bet on that, I will think very much about narrative at the curriculum level, the course level, and the lecture level. Of course, the next sticky question is, how do I assess if this makes a difference or not, but I will leave that for another package of Digestive Biscuits.
It is clear that telling stories is how human beings make sense of the world. We create narratives to make sense of patterns and to remember important things about the world and about ourselves. So if narrative is a natural human way to learn, how can we use this powerful predisposition? It seems to me that we need to include the idea of narrative at several levels of learning. At the highest meta-level, there are the stories we tell about ourselves to create our identities as teachers and as students. Okay, we do that spontaneously anyway cuz we love to tell stories about ourselves. But at a more abstract level, curriculum is sort of a narrative of a discipline. Thus, the order in which we take a series of courses is a kind of narrative. Within a course, the order of topics is a kind of narrative about the course content, and then within each lecture there is a narrative that is the story of the lecture.
We hate it when a narrative is incoherent or boring. We hate it because it is confusing. When I go to a lecture that is jumping all over the place, I find it very very hard to learn that content because I have no way to make a pattern out of it. A good lecture has a narrative line to it that will hold all the details together for me. Because, as a novice, these are all new stories for me, it is really important that these stories make sense! The exam is a time for me to tell the story back to the professor to see if I learned the story. As a student, I realize that the order of the lecture is also a really important narrative line for me. In a few of my classes, there have been several different lecturers, and the topics have been unrelated to each other. I find it very confusing to identify themes and keep the narrative straight when on Wednesday we hear about 19 century dance traditions, Thursday we learn about the Irish harp tradition in the 18th century, and the following Wednesday we hear about the 20th century Irish piano tradition. I closed my notebook today after hearing about Ceili Bands and vamping pianos, and I thought to myself: I wish I had a narrative. This class feels like a bulleted list, and I would very much like to have a paragraph. I mean, I know bulleted lists are clear, but it seems that it predisposes one to memorize facts as discrete units. If the course had a narrative flow, then one could more easily make connections and create an analytical synthesis of the ideas that might create a coherent whole.
In my Folklore class, when the teacher is just lecturing off her bulleted list, there is a lot of background noise in the slightly disengaged room. However, all these apparently disengaged students are utterly silent, motionless, and utterly focused when stops to tell a story. The change in the room is tangible! I wonder very much, if one spoke to these students a year from now. if they will remember the stories or the content of the course? I'm betting on the stories.
I remember Robin Lightner said that there was a chapter in the pscyh text that she uses which seems like a bulleted list of topics. I think she said (correct me if I am remembering this wrong, Robin) that students had a hard time remembering the stuff from this chapter.
I think that when I do my next course design, and I will be redesigning every course I teach, you can bet on that, I will think very much about narrative at the curriculum level, the course level, and the lecture level. Of course, the next sticky question is, how do I assess if this makes a difference or not, but I will leave that for another package of Digestive Biscuits.
Libraries
First of all, Gentle Reader, I love libraries. It's like a hardware store for the mind. I like the quiet bustle of people being interested in books. I love to walk along a row of books reading the titles and wade through all the possibilities of the content. I feel no time in a library, it is such a place of being wholly present and yet transported to another place. Even the most humble library is a place of transcendence and possibility.
I will go and find the local library just to get a sense of what is going on in a particular town. Thirty something years ago, I toured Wales by myself, and part of my quest was to visit the local library in each village I stayed in: small grey slate buildings full of the entire mix of the town. I suppose, in a way, a library is like a pub that you visit in the daytime, while one might save the pub for the evening. Both are full of stories, escape, and entertainment, its just that there are more children, in a physical sense only, at the library. As an undergraduate at the Colorado College, the library was also a central meeting spot. There was a large balcony around the circulation open space which people called the Fishbowl because it a place to window shop for good looking individuals...so they say. I was there for the good looking books, but we have previously established my geekitude. The University of Pennsylvania library did not have that kind of large open space: it was much more compartmentalized, and thus, I think, less social. It didn't really feel like a social center, but that memory is oddly more hazy for me than the Colorado College library. The University of Cincinnati big campus library has a huge spread out social space upon entering, which does circulate with people, but there is a large student center nearby with huge open light spaces that seems to have replaced the library as a social center. Raymond Walters College has a kind of open space in the lobbies of the two central buildings which generate social contact, but the library, alas, is 'hidden' (if you can 'hide' a library) down a hall. There is a lighted open space which is nice, but it is a lonely library.
The City Library of Limerick is in an old warehouse, and it is wide open and full of light in some places, with a cozy section on the side which maintains the old warehouse brickwork. It was full of people from Ireland, Poland, Africa, and India, when I went for my obligatory tour. The Language Tapes section was front and center! For my American Readers, just so you know, at this library, you have to pay a euro to use the internet for a 1/2 hour. Then they make you get off the computer. The hours were a bit limited at this library, but the space was lovely, full of local events posters, and full of families getting books.
The University of Limerick Library is a positively Hopping Joint. It is most certainly the center of student activity, even though there is a student union up the street. The cynic who ran the student orientation said the library is attended only by foreign students during the first 2/3 of the term, but then it fills with Irish students at the end of the term. I'm not sure that was an accurate assessment. The library has been pretty full up to now (two weeks out from exams) and now it is certainly very full of very focused people. There are those few who earnestly text on their phones as well. Some of the policies feel a little confining to me: undergraduates can only check out four books at a time! Another interesting part of this library is the traditional music collection. Evidently, there was a visiting ethnomusicologist here a few years ago who created two substantial CD cabinets full of traditional music CDs. This library also houses a large portion of the public computers and has two public printers, so that contributes to the intense social circulation. Only one floor is wireless, but there are direct connections at many of the study carrels. There is a lot of glass, and this afternoon, I got a seat in the sun next to the literature section. Pure joy. Sun and books. The only thing missing was tea.
I will go and find the local library just to get a sense of what is going on in a particular town. Thirty something years ago, I toured Wales by myself, and part of my quest was to visit the local library in each village I stayed in: small grey slate buildings full of the entire mix of the town. I suppose, in a way, a library is like a pub that you visit in the daytime, while one might save the pub for the evening. Both are full of stories, escape, and entertainment, its just that there are more children, in a physical sense only, at the library. As an undergraduate at the Colorado College, the library was also a central meeting spot. There was a large balcony around the circulation open space which people called the Fishbowl because it a place to window shop for good looking individuals...so they say. I was there for the good looking books, but we have previously established my geekitude. The University of Pennsylvania library did not have that kind of large open space: it was much more compartmentalized, and thus, I think, less social. It didn't really feel like a social center, but that memory is oddly more hazy for me than the Colorado College library. The University of Cincinnati big campus library has a huge spread out social space upon entering, which does circulate with people, but there is a large student center nearby with huge open light spaces that seems to have replaced the library as a social center. Raymond Walters College has a kind of open space in the lobbies of the two central buildings which generate social contact, but the library, alas, is 'hidden' (if you can 'hide' a library) down a hall. There is a lighted open space which is nice, but it is a lonely library.
The City Library of Limerick is in an old warehouse, and it is wide open and full of light in some places, with a cozy section on the side which maintains the old warehouse brickwork. It was full of people from Ireland, Poland, Africa, and India, when I went for my obligatory tour. The Language Tapes section was front and center! For my American Readers, just so you know, at this library, you have to pay a euro to use the internet for a 1/2 hour. Then they make you get off the computer. The hours were a bit limited at this library, but the space was lovely, full of local events posters, and full of families getting books.
The University of Limerick Library is a positively Hopping Joint. It is most certainly the center of student activity, even though there is a student union up the street. The cynic who ran the student orientation said the library is attended only by foreign students during the first 2/3 of the term, but then it fills with Irish students at the end of the term. I'm not sure that was an accurate assessment. The library has been pretty full up to now (two weeks out from exams) and now it is certainly very full of very focused people. There are those few who earnestly text on their phones as well. Some of the policies feel a little confining to me: undergraduates can only check out four books at a time! Another interesting part of this library is the traditional music collection. Evidently, there was a visiting ethnomusicologist here a few years ago who created two substantial CD cabinets full of traditional music CDs. This library also houses a large portion of the public computers and has two public printers, so that contributes to the intense social circulation. Only one floor is wireless, but there are direct connections at many of the study carrels. There is a lot of glass, and this afternoon, I got a seat in the sun next to the literature section. Pure joy. Sun and books. The only thing missing was tea.
Monday, November 19, 2007
What is Irish?
Isn't this the question of the hour? One American in my traditional music class observed, "Everybody wants to be Irish except the Irish." According to my music teacher, a professional guitar player of both traditional and art rock music, an Irish musician can't get a gig in Ireland, but he or she can tour as much as they want to packed houses in any other country, especially America. He was relating how people won't get radio play in Ireland if they sound "too Irish". And this in the town where U2 came from...Of course, they didn't make it in Ireland, they just came back. As I am studying the Irish music revival, it turns out that some of the most influential Irish music compendiums were written by Irish emigres in Chicago and New York. Some of the most early influential recordings of Irish fiddle music were recorded in Chicago, and then brought back. Many of Ireland's most famous authors were banned in Ireland and had to publish in England, France, and America. How interesting! Here is an emblematic image of the problem. See? Here is a Guinness tap, but you can only get Heineken out of it:
What brings this topic to mind is that I just got back from a weekend in Munich to visit my very good friend from graduate school.
Being in Germany for the weekend and then coming back to Ireland was a great way to freshen up my ethnographic eyes, especially after spending a weekend using American sociolinguistic rules and then returning to Irish sociolinguistic rules.
In Ireland there is still a strong tradition of hospitality. I have YET to pay for a cup of coffee and have really struggled to be able to buy other people pints. I'm just not socially quick enough to do it consistently. Actually, today I was finally quick enough and I am proud to say I was able to buy someone else a cup of coffee. (on a tangent, a cup of coffee, no refill, small cup, is two euro. that's about half a Starbucks grande for a third more the price and half the quality: but I digress). So, strong tradition of hospitality, but very very strong personal boundaries. There is certainly more personal restraint, and more verbal games before really communicating. There seems to be a certain insecurity maybe that expresses itself in a careful guarding of boundaries, not giving too much away. There is a restraint in performance and a value of community such that you shouldn't really be too good, or at least, not admit to being very good, so that you don't jeopardize the community feeling of the group. Good 'craic' seems to be good community cheer. Alcohol seems to help the strong boundaries issue, which means that when those boundaries go down, look out! Then you start to get the 'too much information' syndrome. There also seems to be a certain dissatisfaction with external pressures and controls that seems to express itself in the 'carnival' of alcohol. But even without alcohol, there seems to be a sort of passive aggressive challenge to authority what with parking wherever one can, ignoring inconvenient rules, and passively not cooperating.
There seems to be a huge generation gap between people born after 1985 and people born before that. The economic boom of the 90's brought huge culture change. People who remember the recession of the 80's and downright poverty of the 60s and 70s still have a more backwards looking idea about tradition as a vehicle for cultural identity with older generations just recovering from barely healed early 20th century cultural wounds of the beginnings of the free state. But there also appears to be a desperate need to innovate through personal expression. This is sort of a catch-22 for some people who might feel caught in the middle of the ideas that Innovation is a sort of treason, but tradition can be suffocating. Traditional music is an interesting case of this cultural conflict. On the one hand people are trying to "preserve" traditional music, which is music not associated with a particular composer, passed on by oral tradition, and played by the community on a regular basis. On the other hand, one is encouraged to add one's own style and mark to the playing such that you get jazzy type chords on guitars that are backing 'traditional' tunes, reggae beats for hornpipes, or chromatic runs being added as ornaments to reels.
And there is a simmering violence underneath it all. We didn't get out of the gym fast enough one night, and the guy who sits in the entry booth of the gym verbally abused our group all the way out the door. A bus driver, on whose bus I was sitting, messed with almost every passenger by moving the bus about three feet forward when they tried to get on, or not stopping at a bus stop until being several yards away to make the people at the bus stop run for the bus. Two young men got into a verbally abusive shouting match on the bridge outside my building, but they were shouting too incoherently for the nature of the conflict to be clear. I'm not saying anybody comes to blows, or at least I haven't been around when that's happened, but anger seems near the surface such that the careful social restraint seems very useful. One person put it that you can't give anything away because you don't know who will use it against you. She said it was important not to let on that you aspire to anything because everybody will just laugh at you if you don't get it, and never let you forget that you tried and failed. The professors here also do not believe in praise, only telling you how poorly you've done. Other people have said that you can't compliment people because it will just bring bad luck. You should call a beautiful person 'dogface' because it's just asking for trouble to say they are good looking. In my folklore class, the professor talked about how in 'the old days' (whatever that was or whenever that was), you never compliment people or cute children because then you would call the fairies attention to them and the Good Folk would take the complimented person or child away.
But doesn't this all sound familiar? Isn't it just like this in America also? The more I am in different places, the more people seem the same. Except for listening strategies. In Japan, when you listen, you have to keep up running 'listening noise', in America you have to do consistent but spaced out 'listening noise', but in Ireland, you should keep quiet until you know the other person is done talking. It took me a month to figure this one out. An Irish person commented to me recently that I wasn't like all the other Americans who are constantly interrupting.
What brings this topic to mind is that I just got back from a weekend in Munich to visit my very good friend from graduate school.
Being in Germany for the weekend and then coming back to Ireland was a great way to freshen up my ethnographic eyes, especially after spending a weekend using American sociolinguistic rules and then returning to Irish sociolinguistic rules.
In Ireland there is still a strong tradition of hospitality. I have YET to pay for a cup of coffee and have really struggled to be able to buy other people pints. I'm just not socially quick enough to do it consistently. Actually, today I was finally quick enough and I am proud to say I was able to buy someone else a cup of coffee. (on a tangent, a cup of coffee, no refill, small cup, is two euro. that's about half a Starbucks grande for a third more the price and half the quality: but I digress). So, strong tradition of hospitality, but very very strong personal boundaries. There is certainly more personal restraint, and more verbal games before really communicating. There seems to be a certain insecurity maybe that expresses itself in a careful guarding of boundaries, not giving too much away. There is a restraint in performance and a value of community such that you shouldn't really be too good, or at least, not admit to being very good, so that you don't jeopardize the community feeling of the group. Good 'craic' seems to be good community cheer. Alcohol seems to help the strong boundaries issue, which means that when those boundaries go down, look out! Then you start to get the 'too much information' syndrome. There also seems to be a certain dissatisfaction with external pressures and controls that seems to express itself in the 'carnival' of alcohol. But even without alcohol, there seems to be a sort of passive aggressive challenge to authority what with parking wherever one can, ignoring inconvenient rules, and passively not cooperating.
There seems to be a huge generation gap between people born after 1985 and people born before that. The economic boom of the 90's brought huge culture change. People who remember the recession of the 80's and downright poverty of the 60s and 70s still have a more backwards looking idea about tradition as a vehicle for cultural identity with older generations just recovering from barely healed early 20th century cultural wounds of the beginnings of the free state. But there also appears to be a desperate need to innovate through personal expression. This is sort of a catch-22 for some people who might feel caught in the middle of the ideas that Innovation is a sort of treason, but tradition can be suffocating. Traditional music is an interesting case of this cultural conflict. On the one hand people are trying to "preserve" traditional music, which is music not associated with a particular composer, passed on by oral tradition, and played by the community on a regular basis. On the other hand, one is encouraged to add one's own style and mark to the playing such that you get jazzy type chords on guitars that are backing 'traditional' tunes, reggae beats for hornpipes, or chromatic runs being added as ornaments to reels.
And there is a simmering violence underneath it all. We didn't get out of the gym fast enough one night, and the guy who sits in the entry booth of the gym verbally abused our group all the way out the door. A bus driver, on whose bus I was sitting, messed with almost every passenger by moving the bus about three feet forward when they tried to get on, or not stopping at a bus stop until being several yards away to make the people at the bus stop run for the bus. Two young men got into a verbally abusive shouting match on the bridge outside my building, but they were shouting too incoherently for the nature of the conflict to be clear. I'm not saying anybody comes to blows, or at least I haven't been around when that's happened, but anger seems near the surface such that the careful social restraint seems very useful. One person put it that you can't give anything away because you don't know who will use it against you. She said it was important not to let on that you aspire to anything because everybody will just laugh at you if you don't get it, and never let you forget that you tried and failed. The professors here also do not believe in praise, only telling you how poorly you've done. Other people have said that you can't compliment people because it will just bring bad luck. You should call a beautiful person 'dogface' because it's just asking for trouble to say they are good looking. In my folklore class, the professor talked about how in 'the old days' (whatever that was or whenever that was), you never compliment people or cute children because then you would call the fairies attention to them and the Good Folk would take the complimented person or child away.
But doesn't this all sound familiar? Isn't it just like this in America also? The more I am in different places, the more people seem the same. Except for listening strategies. In Japan, when you listen, you have to keep up running 'listening noise', in America you have to do consistent but spaced out 'listening noise', but in Ireland, you should keep quiet until you know the other person is done talking. It took me a month to figure this one out. An Irish person commented to me recently that I wasn't like all the other Americans who are constantly interrupting.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Banka: African funk in Limerick
Hey, boyz n grrlz. We're here blogging live from the music studios of the University of limerick. I just discovered that I have wireless access in this room. Once each week, the World Music Academy here gives free concerts of traditional music, or whatever master class guest lecturers are around for the day. Every week it has been an astonishing hour of virtuoso performances of all kinds, but today is the freakin' weirdest and most wonderful so far.
It is a grey day here in the WessofIreland, and today's concert by Banka is a blast of funky sunshine in all the grey. To appreciate the contrast of west African funk in this place, you have to know that up to now, almost none of the musicians who have performed here have been amplified. These guys are TOTALLY wired and the amps are turned UP. The floor is shaking, and I can feel the bass in my chest. This is traditional music like this room has never felt before. I have mentioned before the fact that Irish audiences listen with their feet, and, indeed, while Banka positively grooves up on the little stage, the feet are going but so are the shoulders, nay the whole row of connected seats is moving.
On stage are four guys: electric piano, full drum set, a bass and an electric guitar (did I already mention they were all, like, way amplified?). They are playing pretty traditional African pop, which has a really distinctive rhythmic groove with deep resonant harmonies. It is quite a trip to hear the djembe rhythmns on a drum set. These poor guys must be freezing cuz they are all wearing big sweaters, and the singer has not taken his scarf off yet.
They are here to teach a master class in singing, and some of their students were still practicing when I came in to set up. It was quite a picture of translation. Here was this group of Irish, European-Americans, and Chinese people sort of grooving in a circle, singing these deep harmony songs from West Africa. On stage, in the middle of the singing, the lead singer gets up to dance, and he gets the audience (who have been practicing the song he is singing) to join in the call and response of "ummama me" as he sings. How not Irish is this, or what? In his huge sweater and scarf, there is the lead singer grooving all over the little stage to the whoops of the Irish crowd. Whatta trip to planet earth.
The bass player comes out to thank us and bless us, as the audience that has come to listen to him. He then invites the students up onto the stage to sing with him, and there they all are, this buncha northern Europeans and Asians, ready to participate in the sub-Saharan rhythms. They try, rather self-consciously and stiff kneed, to dance while the microphone shrieks, and they sing their new song to us. It is sweet. They forget the words and consult their pieces of paper with the phonetic transcriptions with this full full sound blasting out from behind them. Oh, wait, they have remembered the words and gotten some confidence and now we can hear them singing over the music. The lead singer and piano player, grins as he pounds out the melody: now he is actively laughing, and he comes out to join the novice students to teach them how to dance more than just shift from one foot to another. He ties his scarf around the hips of the woman nearest him, and the drummer pounds out a better rhythm for them to shift from one foot to another. The guitar player just quits playing and pulls out a video camera to video this line of melanin challenged students making a heroic effort at this brand new world they have just entered.
I love my planet. This is the part of globalization this is good, great fun. This ain't World Bank globalism: this is international craic.
It is a grey day here in the WessofIreland, and today's concert by Banka is a blast of funky sunshine in all the grey. To appreciate the contrast of west African funk in this place, you have to know that up to now, almost none of the musicians who have performed here have been amplified. These guys are TOTALLY wired and the amps are turned UP. The floor is shaking, and I can feel the bass in my chest. This is traditional music like this room has never felt before. I have mentioned before the fact that Irish audiences listen with their feet, and, indeed, while Banka positively grooves up on the little stage, the feet are going but so are the shoulders, nay the whole row of connected seats is moving.
On stage are four guys: electric piano, full drum set, a bass and an electric guitar (did I already mention they were all, like, way amplified?). They are playing pretty traditional African pop, which has a really distinctive rhythmic groove with deep resonant harmonies. It is quite a trip to hear the djembe rhythmns on a drum set. These poor guys must be freezing cuz they are all wearing big sweaters, and the singer has not taken his scarf off yet.
They are here to teach a master class in singing, and some of their students were still practicing when I came in to set up. It was quite a picture of translation. Here was this group of Irish, European-Americans, and Chinese people sort of grooving in a circle, singing these deep harmony songs from West Africa. On stage, in the middle of the singing, the lead singer gets up to dance, and he gets the audience (who have been practicing the song he is singing) to join in the call and response of "ummama me" as he sings. How not Irish is this, or what? In his huge sweater and scarf, there is the lead singer grooving all over the little stage to the whoops of the Irish crowd. Whatta trip to planet earth.
The bass player comes out to thank us and bless us, as the audience that has come to listen to him. He then invites the students up onto the stage to sing with him, and there they all are, this buncha northern Europeans and Asians, ready to participate in the sub-Saharan rhythms. They try, rather self-consciously and stiff kneed, to dance while the microphone shrieks, and they sing their new song to us. It is sweet. They forget the words and consult their pieces of paper with the phonetic transcriptions with this full full sound blasting out from behind them. Oh, wait, they have remembered the words and gotten some confidence and now we can hear them singing over the music. The lead singer and piano player, grins as he pounds out the melody: now he is actively laughing, and he comes out to join the novice students to teach them how to dance more than just shift from one foot to another. He ties his scarf around the hips of the woman nearest him, and the drummer pounds out a better rhythm for them to shift from one foot to another. The guitar player just quits playing and pulls out a video camera to video this line of melanin challenged students making a heroic effort at this brand new world they have just entered.
I love my planet. This is the part of globalization this is good, great fun. This ain't World Bank globalism: this is international craic.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
The ethnographer and the student
This posting is rated R for severe ranting. The positions of the characters may be exaggerated for rhetorical effect.
As a student, I am spitting mad, and I fully understand that this is a purely American cultural issue. As an ethnographer, of course situations like this take on an oddly schizophrenic quality for me.
Ruth Student (RS): Right, so I take these three tests and every single one of them is a memorize and regurgitate test of freakin' trivia that has, to my mind, nothing to do with the course goals, which are not even freakin' stated on 5 out of 6 "syllabi" that I have received. In every case the professors freakin' outright *lied* about what was on the tests and then berated the class as a group upon receiving poor results! THEN I go back to their syllabi to try to *guess* what they want for the exam, and not one, not *freakin'* one of the impossibly extensive reading lists is in ANY recognizable citation format. Not one. Not freakin' one. In fact, many of the citations are *incomplete*!!!! Am I feeling capriciously jerked around by irresponsible authority OR WHAT?
Ruth Ethnographer (RE): Well, your irritation would make sense if you were in an American system, but you are not. You are in the Irish system that makes different assumptions about the role of the student and the role of the professor. You were even lucky to get a piece of paper that outlined the course. You really can't even call it a syllabus because that would just confuse you. It is actually called a "Module Guide" and has only just recently been required to be provided to students. In the past, you only got a reading list. In this system, the student is responsible for her own knowledge. The lectures are only supposed to give you a general idea of themes, and you fill in the picture with your own research that you report in the final essay.
RS: Okay, but why then does every one of these people complain that students don't attend lectures. Why should they? They have the reading list, if that's what's so important. I mean, how irresponsible is that to tell me, a student who knows nothing, *nothing* about the subject, to go and teach myself the topic and then get assessed on my knowledge using questions somebody else thought up.
RE: Theoretically, that is why you go to lectures. From the lectures, you should be able to get an idea of the direction that the professor’s questions would take.
RS: Oh, that's bullshit. I know for a fact that the student philosophy is to go to the public folders, read past exam essays, and study those. In this system, why would they "give away" what they're gonna test on if the exams are just ways to make students learn through fear and humiliation. One professor actually said in class that she gave the test as a 'shake up' for lazy students. She said it was a reward for students who attended lecture. What kind of pathetic excuse for assessment is that? Assessment as cattle prod? I thought it has been clearly established by research that torture does not extract reliable intelligence. Is that a metaphor gone one step too far? I don't think so.
RE: Well, you need to remember that student initiative is highly valued in this system, and they see that as you being able to demonstrate that, as a student, you can obtain information and report it back coherently. They see it as respect for the student's autonomy. In fact, they see the American system as 'leading students by the nose', as I heard one person phrase it. They see it as insulting that the professors in America give points for constant assessment.
RS: Oh yeah? Well, I was in a tutorial where I was the only one who did the reading. The tutorial leader (not the professor) asked who had read it. I nodded, but nobody else responded. She then, I kid you not, berated the class as losers for 20 minutes and then, I am not making this up, assigned a reading as punishment. Oh, right: learning as punishment?! She lost that group of people. You could feel it in that room. Rage as she wanted, she lost. She will get no work from these people. In a case where the hierarchy is so strong, and the power differentials so disparate, passive resistance is the only method left. I went home and cried because I hated to see education turn into a battlefield of hatred between professor and student.
RE: Well, it was sort of irresponsible of the students not to have done the work for the tutorial, don't you think? Even in your classes, you are disappointed when your students don't read, and this is a common complaint among all professors: students don't read. They are passive and expect to be 'spoon fed' information.
RS: True, true. But it is a disrespectful copout to blame 'lazy students' for the failure of a teacher to teach. If I want my students to read, I need to help them want to read. I need to structure my classroom environment so that there is a reason to read. In one course I attend, the professor copies paragraphs out of a book, types them into her powerpoint, and reads the powerpoint to us. I don't read for that course. Of course, now I have to because of the exam coming up, but what kind of questions can I expect from someone who doesn't even bother to research her own subject? This will be a fair assessment? Will I be held up to a standard that the professor herself can't even meet?
RE: Don't be so hard on them. Some of them are overworked, some of them are part-timers with no training, and some of them are working unrenewable contracts. What incentives do these people have to care about you? In fact, in this system, caring actually has nothing to do with it. Your learning is up to you. Your integrity and your investment in the discipline are up to you. As a student, lower in the hierarchy, you need to earn your place in the hierarchy by demonstrating your command of the system, the content, and the hierarchy itself. Nobody should help you do this because that would be cheating. Remember that you call med school graduates Doctor regardless of their GPAs. The president of the United States had a C average at Yale.
RS: cookies. I need cookies. I know I have a package of Digestive Biscuits around here someone. Damn, I wish I had remembered to get the chocolate covered ones. Okay, ethno-grrl, I'll play this system. I'm makin' up a reading list now, and I'll read it and take notes, and I guess I'll pass these exams, but the back of my neck is still hot because, somehow, this context sucks all the fun out of it.
RE: You are responsible for your own fun. Remember Debbie Page positively glowing about her great reading list for her exams? You can do that too. Enjoy the reading, really learn something.
RS: Okay, I know, I can do that, I can do that because I am an experienced student, I am a certified geek, and I actually *do* like this stuff. HOWEVER, my students in Cincinnati are rarely any of those things, and I refuse to treat academic novices in a disrespectful way. My syllabi will be clear, my assessments will relate clearly to my course goals, and I will create lectures and discussions that will help my novice students come to an appreciation of the literature, even if it is something that their program forces them to do. As a matter of fact, if you look me up on Ratemyprofessor.com, those are the comments. So, I guess I am able to do that. Is that 'leading them by the nose'? What if a person is 'lead by the nose' to a good place at which they did not expect to arrive?
RE: Well, one criticism of that is that American students are over confident, even arrogant, about their ignorance.
RS: Oh, right, and the insecure arrogance of European superiority is better?
RE: Arrogance is, of course, disrespectful no matter what form it takes, and these are just generalizations. There are good smart students who love their disciplines that come out of both American and European institutions.
RS: Ugh. Cultural relativism. How can a person get a good righteous rant going with you around to crash the party.
RE: No more coffee for you, jarhead. Go get some chamomile tea and get started on that reading list.
As a student, I am spitting mad, and I fully understand that this is a purely American cultural issue. As an ethnographer, of course situations like this take on an oddly schizophrenic quality for me.
Ruth Student (RS): Right, so I take these three tests and every single one of them is a memorize and regurgitate test of freakin' trivia that has, to my mind, nothing to do with the course goals, which are not even freakin' stated on 5 out of 6 "syllabi" that I have received. In every case the professors freakin' outright *lied* about what was on the tests and then berated the class as a group upon receiving poor results! THEN I go back to their syllabi to try to *guess* what they want for the exam, and not one, not *freakin'* one of the impossibly extensive reading lists is in ANY recognizable citation format. Not one. Not freakin' one. In fact, many of the citations are *incomplete*!!!! Am I feeling capriciously jerked around by irresponsible authority OR WHAT?
Ruth Ethnographer (RE): Well, your irritation would make sense if you were in an American system, but you are not. You are in the Irish system that makes different assumptions about the role of the student and the role of the professor. You were even lucky to get a piece of paper that outlined the course. You really can't even call it a syllabus because that would just confuse you. It is actually called a "Module Guide" and has only just recently been required to be provided to students. In the past, you only got a reading list. In this system, the student is responsible for her own knowledge. The lectures are only supposed to give you a general idea of themes, and you fill in the picture with your own research that you report in the final essay.
RS: Okay, but why then does every one of these people complain that students don't attend lectures. Why should they? They have the reading list, if that's what's so important. I mean, how irresponsible is that to tell me, a student who knows nothing, *nothing* about the subject, to go and teach myself the topic and then get assessed on my knowledge using questions somebody else thought up.
RE: Theoretically, that is why you go to lectures. From the lectures, you should be able to get an idea of the direction that the professor’s questions would take.
RS: Oh, that's bullshit. I know for a fact that the student philosophy is to go to the public folders, read past exam essays, and study those. In this system, why would they "give away" what they're gonna test on if the exams are just ways to make students learn through fear and humiliation. One professor actually said in class that she gave the test as a 'shake up' for lazy students. She said it was a reward for students who attended lecture. What kind of pathetic excuse for assessment is that? Assessment as cattle prod? I thought it has been clearly established by research that torture does not extract reliable intelligence. Is that a metaphor gone one step too far? I don't think so.
RE: Well, you need to remember that student initiative is highly valued in this system, and they see that as you being able to demonstrate that, as a student, you can obtain information and report it back coherently. They see it as respect for the student's autonomy. In fact, they see the American system as 'leading students by the nose', as I heard one person phrase it. They see it as insulting that the professors in America give points for constant assessment.
RS: Oh yeah? Well, I was in a tutorial where I was the only one who did the reading. The tutorial leader (not the professor) asked who had read it. I nodded, but nobody else responded. She then, I kid you not, berated the class as losers for 20 minutes and then, I am not making this up, assigned a reading as punishment. Oh, right: learning as punishment?! She lost that group of people. You could feel it in that room. Rage as she wanted, she lost. She will get no work from these people. In a case where the hierarchy is so strong, and the power differentials so disparate, passive resistance is the only method left. I went home and cried because I hated to see education turn into a battlefield of hatred between professor and student.
RE: Well, it was sort of irresponsible of the students not to have done the work for the tutorial, don't you think? Even in your classes, you are disappointed when your students don't read, and this is a common complaint among all professors: students don't read. They are passive and expect to be 'spoon fed' information.
RS: True, true. But it is a disrespectful copout to blame 'lazy students' for the failure of a teacher to teach. If I want my students to read, I need to help them want to read. I need to structure my classroom environment so that there is a reason to read. In one course I attend, the professor copies paragraphs out of a book, types them into her powerpoint, and reads the powerpoint to us. I don't read for that course. Of course, now I have to because of the exam coming up, but what kind of questions can I expect from someone who doesn't even bother to research her own subject? This will be a fair assessment? Will I be held up to a standard that the professor herself can't even meet?
RE: Don't be so hard on them. Some of them are overworked, some of them are part-timers with no training, and some of them are working unrenewable contracts. What incentives do these people have to care about you? In fact, in this system, caring actually has nothing to do with it. Your learning is up to you. Your integrity and your investment in the discipline are up to you. As a student, lower in the hierarchy, you need to earn your place in the hierarchy by demonstrating your command of the system, the content, and the hierarchy itself. Nobody should help you do this because that would be cheating. Remember that you call med school graduates Doctor regardless of their GPAs. The president of the United States had a C average at Yale.
RS: cookies. I need cookies. I know I have a package of Digestive Biscuits around here someone. Damn, I wish I had remembered to get the chocolate covered ones. Okay, ethno-grrl, I'll play this system. I'm makin' up a reading list now, and I'll read it and take notes, and I guess I'll pass these exams, but the back of my neck is still hot because, somehow, this context sucks all the fun out of it.
RE: You are responsible for your own fun. Remember Debbie Page positively glowing about her great reading list for her exams? You can do that too. Enjoy the reading, really learn something.
RS: Okay, I know, I can do that, I can do that because I am an experienced student, I am a certified geek, and I actually *do* like this stuff. HOWEVER, my students in Cincinnati are rarely any of those things, and I refuse to treat academic novices in a disrespectful way. My syllabi will be clear, my assessments will relate clearly to my course goals, and I will create lectures and discussions that will help my novice students come to an appreciation of the literature, even if it is something that their program forces them to do. As a matter of fact, if you look me up on Ratemyprofessor.com, those are the comments. So, I guess I am able to do that. Is that 'leading them by the nose'? What if a person is 'lead by the nose' to a good place at which they did not expect to arrive?
RE: Well, one criticism of that is that American students are over confident, even arrogant, about their ignorance.
RS: Oh, right, and the insecure arrogance of European superiority is better?
RE: Arrogance is, of course, disrespectful no matter what form it takes, and these are just generalizations. There are good smart students who love their disciplines that come out of both American and European institutions.
RS: Ugh. Cultural relativism. How can a person get a good righteous rant going with you around to crash the party.
RE: No more coffee for you, jarhead. Go get some chamomile tea and get started on that reading list.
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Personal Freedom vs. Social Responsibility
This posting is rated AR (academic rambling) for references to specific works of literature and abstruse rumination.
In Yeats’ play ‘On Baile’s Strand’ (1904), Cuchulainn and Conchobor are presented as two opposing forces: passionate personal freedom vs. rational social stability. These two characters are two heroes from the Tain Bo Cuailgne, the early first millennia saga of the contest between the Queen of Connaught and the King of Ulster. Yeats was better known for his poetry, but this is regarded (by at least one erudite professor) as his finest piece of drama. Surely, as an artist in the early 20th century, and a person who valued artistic passion, Yeats would have seen these two ideas as necessarily opposing forces unable to peacefully co-exist. It seems that this point of view has not become passé in the last hundred years or so. Nevertheless, I saw a survey he filled out for a creativity research study (!) at an archival exhibit of his work in Dublin. On it he indicated that he was very disciplined about practicing his art. While he found creative inspiration to come to him in flashes and that he felt like it came from a non-rational place, he also indicated that after the initial blast of an idea, he would revise constantly and write even when he didn’t feel like it. So maybe this play presents a balance in the poet’s mind. Perhaps Cuchulainn futilely fighting the waves was about the poet futilely trying to control passion. The criticism of Conchobor’s rationality is the poet’s frustration of trying to polish this uncontrollable passion in some kind of publicly presentable product, which is annoying but necessary.
The play was presented by the lecturer as two opposing forces in Irish society, the passionate Irish free-state republicans and the rational unionists who thought Ireland could remain Ireland but economically stable by retaining union with England. Thus, when Conchobor triumphs, and Cuchulainn goes mad and wades into the sea to fight the waves, then the symbolism can be read as criticism of the futility of the Irish nationalist cause. However, this reading does not make sense to me. Yeats wrote one of the great nationalist plays, Cathleen Ni Houlihan, where his character is the Goddess Eire who exhorts the audience that it is a higher duty one owes to one’s country that supercedes duty even to family. Then he writes all these very personal poems about Cuchulainn with whom he seems to identify. And lastly, there is that creativity survey that so clearly shows the conflict in his mind between passion and discipline. Therefore, it seems that this play may be more profitably read as the conflict of the artist trying to express himself within the confines of social institutions rather than as a political criticism of the futility of the republican cause. In this way, the desperate final action of fighting the sea might not be a symbol of futility but of the artist’s condition in conventional society.
Myself, I am a prisoner of that institution, sometimes too ready to see the waves as futility, too ready to sit with Conchobor on his institutional throne and be safe even as I admire Cuchulainn’s madness in the waves because he is so committed to this artistic passion. Why is the image of self-destruction so often associated with intense creativity? Maybe because when a person is in the grip of the Muse it can feel like one is overwhelmed or burning up. Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote, “I burn my candle at both ends/ It will not last the night./ But, ah, my foes, and oh, my friends/ it casts a lovely light.” And let’s not forget the immortal lines from the poet Neil Young, “Better to burn out than fade away, my my, hey hey.” I think Yeats would have liked that song. Did you know he got some kind of penis-oriented procedure as an elderly person so he could have some sort of 'second youth', as it were? Be that as it may....But even though the life of creative passion seems like it requires some kind of romantic self-destruction in the metaphors these poets use of water and fire (such elemental destruction!), these poets all manage to communicate these ideas within the limits of the institutions of print, being poet laureate, publishing, and the music industry. Thus it seems that the artist thrashes around in the destructive elements, burning and drowning in creativity, and if he or she is lucky, pull out in time to survive for another bout with the Muse. Of course, the Tate is full of artists who didn’t or couldn’t…
Of course, all of the above is *very* Eurocentric. Asian philosophy takes a totally different tack. The question I will think about now is what is it about the Greco-Roman Western European Weltanschauung that associates creative passion with destruction? Is it the institution of the Church? How does this work in East Asian perspectives? Tanizaki writes about the destructive power of creativity, Kawabata writes about how institutions kill creativity, and Lu Xun writes about how people strain to be creative but the culture stifles it. Hmmmmm. But the Vedas and the Dhammapada and the Sutras write about how true creativity comes from silence and centering. Of course, there is the Diamond Sutra that talks about how Desire is actually a Burning House that we need to escape from to find peace, so there is that passion as destructive fire thing. Oh, oh, it's getting complicated and there is no elegant way to stop! I suppose this where I am supposed to burst into flames...
In Yeats’ play ‘On Baile’s Strand’ (1904), Cuchulainn and Conchobor are presented as two opposing forces: passionate personal freedom vs. rational social stability. These two characters are two heroes from the Tain Bo Cuailgne, the early first millennia saga of the contest between the Queen of Connaught and the King of Ulster. Yeats was better known for his poetry, but this is regarded (by at least one erudite professor) as his finest piece of drama. Surely, as an artist in the early 20th century, and a person who valued artistic passion, Yeats would have seen these two ideas as necessarily opposing forces unable to peacefully co-exist. It seems that this point of view has not become passé in the last hundred years or so. Nevertheless, I saw a survey he filled out for a creativity research study (!) at an archival exhibit of his work in Dublin. On it he indicated that he was very disciplined about practicing his art. While he found creative inspiration to come to him in flashes and that he felt like it came from a non-rational place, he also indicated that after the initial blast of an idea, he would revise constantly and write even when he didn’t feel like it. So maybe this play presents a balance in the poet’s mind. Perhaps Cuchulainn futilely fighting the waves was about the poet futilely trying to control passion. The criticism of Conchobor’s rationality is the poet’s frustration of trying to polish this uncontrollable passion in some kind of publicly presentable product, which is annoying but necessary.
The play was presented by the lecturer as two opposing forces in Irish society, the passionate Irish free-state republicans and the rational unionists who thought Ireland could remain Ireland but economically stable by retaining union with England. Thus, when Conchobor triumphs, and Cuchulainn goes mad and wades into the sea to fight the waves, then the symbolism can be read as criticism of the futility of the Irish nationalist cause. However, this reading does not make sense to me. Yeats wrote one of the great nationalist plays, Cathleen Ni Houlihan, where his character is the Goddess Eire who exhorts the audience that it is a higher duty one owes to one’s country that supercedes duty even to family. Then he writes all these very personal poems about Cuchulainn with whom he seems to identify. And lastly, there is that creativity survey that so clearly shows the conflict in his mind between passion and discipline. Therefore, it seems that this play may be more profitably read as the conflict of the artist trying to express himself within the confines of social institutions rather than as a political criticism of the futility of the republican cause. In this way, the desperate final action of fighting the sea might not be a symbol of futility but of the artist’s condition in conventional society.
Myself, I am a prisoner of that institution, sometimes too ready to see the waves as futility, too ready to sit with Conchobor on his institutional throne and be safe even as I admire Cuchulainn’s madness in the waves because he is so committed to this artistic passion. Why is the image of self-destruction so often associated with intense creativity? Maybe because when a person is in the grip of the Muse it can feel like one is overwhelmed or burning up. Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote, “I burn my candle at both ends/ It will not last the night./ But, ah, my foes, and oh, my friends/ it casts a lovely light.” And let’s not forget the immortal lines from the poet Neil Young, “Better to burn out than fade away, my my, hey hey.” I think Yeats would have liked that song. Did you know he got some kind of penis-oriented procedure as an elderly person so he could have some sort of 'second youth', as it were? Be that as it may....But even though the life of creative passion seems like it requires some kind of romantic self-destruction in the metaphors these poets use of water and fire (such elemental destruction!), these poets all manage to communicate these ideas within the limits of the institutions of print, being poet laureate, publishing, and the music industry. Thus it seems that the artist thrashes around in the destructive elements, burning and drowning in creativity, and if he or she is lucky, pull out in time to survive for another bout with the Muse. Of course, the Tate is full of artists who didn’t or couldn’t…
Of course, all of the above is *very* Eurocentric. Asian philosophy takes a totally different tack. The question I will think about now is what is it about the Greco-Roman Western European Weltanschauung that associates creative passion with destruction? Is it the institution of the Church? How does this work in East Asian perspectives? Tanizaki writes about the destructive power of creativity, Kawabata writes about how institutions kill creativity, and Lu Xun writes about how people strain to be creative but the culture stifles it. Hmmmmm. But the Vedas and the Dhammapada and the Sutras write about how true creativity comes from silence and centering. Of course, there is the Diamond Sutra that talks about how Desire is actually a Burning House that we need to escape from to find peace, so there is that passion as destructive fire thing. Oh, oh, it's getting complicated and there is no elegant way to stop! I suppose this where I am supposed to burst into flames...
Saturday, November 3, 2007
A photo journal of Limerick
Granny had asked for some photos of Limerick: I have posted a photo journal in my Snapfish account. (I'm still working on the Flickr thing, really...) I had an uneventful, thoughtful meander down the river path, into town where I did a few errands, and then walked home via the grocery store. Limerick is a small town, really. The industrial burbs extend pretty far around it as sprawl creeps viruslike into the countryside, but the downtown area is fairly limited in size. The University lies about 3 miles from the center of town. It's not a bad walk. Anyway, here are the photos. You can login as me at snapfish.com: ruth.benander@gmail.com, Aiz600. I have captioned the photos so you can sort of follow the walk. Whattaya think Granny? Are there some particular streets you need me to go back and document?
Friday, November 2, 2007
the personal relationships of testing
This post is rated VT (very technical) for technical reflection on assessment, so it might get a little boring if you, Gentle Reader, are not involved in testing/assessment. Or, you might find it interesting as a little window on What Teachers Think About. In the Traditional System of assessment, a student wrote an examination essay at the end of the course that was in answer to a set question designed to express the main ideas and synthesis of course ideas through a recital of facts associated with the subject. The type of assessment we think about in the Pedagogy Biz has two forms: formative (as you go along, how is everybody doing) and summative (that trad exam above). An important idea in formative assessment is to have the test results be able to tell the instructor if the students are are getting the information that the instructor is trying to get across. It might seem simple, but in actual practice, there is whole lot more going on.
From the instructor's point of view, I want to design a test that asks the students to demonstrate their ability to work with the class material. I want to see if the course goals are being met. This purpose assumes I am honest about what my actual course goals are, so as a teacher, I need to make sure I am testing what I am teaching. It just seems fair that way, to me. However, as a student in this Irish system, I have learned about some new nuances of testing that are very interesting.
The test is part of the personal relationship that the teacher has with each student. It is sometimes the only one-to-one interaction with the professor that the student has in a big lecture of 100-400 students. It is also an expression of trust in the relationship: the professor will test me fairly. An exchange is implied where if I work hard for the professor (study, come to lecture, do the readings), then the assessments will deal with those things, or whatever the professor tells me I will be assessed. Because of the judging nature of the exams, and a score with grade consequences, I will adjust my behavior to accommodate that judgement. As a student, I understand that the only thing I have control of is my studying: the nature of the assessment is given to the person who, technically, I trust to know what I need to know. Thus, the test is also seen by the students as a measure of the professor's competence. Does this person understand her job sufficiently to be able to competently judge what I need to know and how to find out what I do know.
So studying is something I do for the course, but there is also an element that the studying I do is part of an exchange I have with the professor. There are multiple skills in test taking. Most obviously, one masters the content of the course, but there are several layers to this process. First, what type of content do I guess (and it really *is* guessing, from a student's point of view as a novice in the subject) that the professor will choose to put on the test. This is a guess most often informed by two clues: what the professor says in class relating to the test and cultural expectations of what is usually asked on tests. One might also guess from what is emphasized in the class lectures, since, presumably, this would indicate the emphasis of the course. However, all of these guesses assume that the purpose of the test is to allow the student to demonstrate her mastery of the course material. Nevertheless, there are purposes to testing such as instilling fear to make students work harder, to weed out a certain amount of the class who guesses poorly, either concerning content or structure, or even just a random fulfilling of the expectation that there be testing done. One cannot prepare for any of these purposes.
I have taken three tests at the University of Limerick so far in three different classes, and it is very clear to me that cultural knowledge is very important in studying. In all three classes, each professor was doing something novel by having a test in the middle of the course, and not having only a final exam. So, it is possible that this form of testing was new to them. In each case, they all announced in class that it would be a short test/exam/quiz (all three words were used) on the course material so far, and each one said, "Don't worry about it." In every case, this was false information, so any studying guesses based on believing the professor would have been wrong. The tests were all for at least 10% of the final grade: a student should be concerned about this. The course materal cited in some of the questions was tangential to the main points made in the lectures: one had to closely study one's notes and any ancillary material provided. They were all three "something to worry about." In all three tests, the focus was on the recitation of facts. In no case were course themes, ideas, or analysis requestsed, which had been the focus of the lectures I attended. These tests were all at the bottom of Bloom's taxonomy: memorize and identify. In all three tests, obscure details were requested in at least two or three questions that had nothing to do with the main content of the course.
I was not able to speak with students about one of the tests, but I did speak with students about the other two afterwards. In both cases, the American students were reeling. There was a clear case of complete misunderstanding of how to study and what to study for these tests. The Americans were focused on ideas and themes, not "What character in the play said this line" or "What type of flute was James O'Donnel playing in the sample played in class." The Americans had studied Big Picture but the tests were asking for the numbers on the topographic lines. Also clear in these conversations was a feeling of betrayal. I was suprised by this, but I also recognized it and shared the feeling. That the professors had not been clear about what they wanted us to know, and the apparently obscure details they were asking for was regarded as a breach of trust between student and professor. One student said she found the test she took 'insulting'. Another student commented, 'I was starting to like that guy, but now I totally don't trust him. What's the point of working hard for his class when he'll do something like this to you?" From my point of view, these tests indicated a very different way of knowing the subject. I lacked the cultural/social back ground to know what I needed to know. When I asked one of the lecturers how grades fell out on his test, he said the German students did the best, American students not so well, and the Irish students were kind of up and down the scale.
From the Irish students' point of view, they accepted this as par for the course. "You never know what they want you to know. You memorize as much as you can, and if you get a C, you still pass." "No one can get an A here, so why try?" No personal relationship with the professor was assumed: the teacher was someone who did things to you. "If you care, you'll just get disgusted so why bother?" said one Irish student in his fourth year, "Just memorize the exam papers from last year. There's no point in going to the lectures." This alienation suprised me, but the practical approach to high stakes exams made sense. But as someone who does care, , it seemed so dry, so impersonal, so sad to think about course content this way.
My other level of concern is that these tests clearly would not tell the professors anything useful about the classes, about what ideas were being understood, about what concepts might need more attention. It really was busy work for them. In one class, the professor commented to the class, "On the test it seemed like a lot of you were just guessing. That's not good," and that was the only feedback she gave. All she did was tell us we were losers. Well, I thought, if the majority of the class had trouble with the assessment, would that not tell the lecturer something about either the test (it was a bad test) or the class (something about the content needs to be clarified because clearly what you want to get across is not getting across). The professor's automatic assumption that the class was a bunch of slackers was insulting and discouraging.
So what have I learned so far from this? A test is a part of the relationship I have with my students. I need to be responsible with my end of the bargain: I must be clear and fair about what I want students to know and how I ask them to demonstrate it. A test with both identification/definition as well as analysis/synthesis will give me a better portrait of how the class is doing than just one or the other. I need to remember that my students are novices in the topic in which I am an expert. What seems easy to me might still seem hard to them. It is not cheating to be clear up front with my testing expectations for the students, and my tests should reflect what I have emphasized in class. Partial credit is not a bad thing. Testing is a demonstration of my leadership of the class, and I need to be able to demonstrate that I am a person worthy of being trusted with that power.
From the instructor's point of view, I want to design a test that asks the students to demonstrate their ability to work with the class material. I want to see if the course goals are being met. This purpose assumes I am honest about what my actual course goals are, so as a teacher, I need to make sure I am testing what I am teaching. It just seems fair that way, to me. However, as a student in this Irish system, I have learned about some new nuances of testing that are very interesting.
The test is part of the personal relationship that the teacher has with each student. It is sometimes the only one-to-one interaction with the professor that the student has in a big lecture of 100-400 students. It is also an expression of trust in the relationship: the professor will test me fairly. An exchange is implied where if I work hard for the professor (study, come to lecture, do the readings), then the assessments will deal with those things, or whatever the professor tells me I will be assessed. Because of the judging nature of the exams, and a score with grade consequences, I will adjust my behavior to accommodate that judgement. As a student, I understand that the only thing I have control of is my studying: the nature of the assessment is given to the person who, technically, I trust to know what I need to know. Thus, the test is also seen by the students as a measure of the professor's competence. Does this person understand her job sufficiently to be able to competently judge what I need to know and how to find out what I do know.
So studying is something I do for the course, but there is also an element that the studying I do is part of an exchange I have with the professor. There are multiple skills in test taking. Most obviously, one masters the content of the course, but there are several layers to this process. First, what type of content do I guess (and it really *is* guessing, from a student's point of view as a novice in the subject) that the professor will choose to put on the test. This is a guess most often informed by two clues: what the professor says in class relating to the test and cultural expectations of what is usually asked on tests. One might also guess from what is emphasized in the class lectures, since, presumably, this would indicate the emphasis of the course. However, all of these guesses assume that the purpose of the test is to allow the student to demonstrate her mastery of the course material. Nevertheless, there are purposes to testing such as instilling fear to make students work harder, to weed out a certain amount of the class who guesses poorly, either concerning content or structure, or even just a random fulfilling of the expectation that there be testing done. One cannot prepare for any of these purposes.
I have taken three tests at the University of Limerick so far in three different classes, and it is very clear to me that cultural knowledge is very important in studying. In all three classes, each professor was doing something novel by having a test in the middle of the course, and not having only a final exam. So, it is possible that this form of testing was new to them. In each case, they all announced in class that it would be a short test/exam/quiz (all three words were used) on the course material so far, and each one said, "Don't worry about it." In every case, this was false information, so any studying guesses based on believing the professor would have been wrong. The tests were all for at least 10% of the final grade: a student should be concerned about this. The course materal cited in some of the questions was tangential to the main points made in the lectures: one had to closely study one's notes and any ancillary material provided. They were all three "something to worry about." In all three tests, the focus was on the recitation of facts. In no case were course themes, ideas, or analysis requestsed, which had been the focus of the lectures I attended. These tests were all at the bottom of Bloom's taxonomy: memorize and identify. In all three tests, obscure details were requested in at least two or three questions that had nothing to do with the main content of the course.
I was not able to speak with students about one of the tests, but I did speak with students about the other two afterwards. In both cases, the American students were reeling. There was a clear case of complete misunderstanding of how to study and what to study for these tests. The Americans were focused on ideas and themes, not "What character in the play said this line" or "What type of flute was James O'Donnel playing in the sample played in class." The Americans had studied Big Picture but the tests were asking for the numbers on the topographic lines. Also clear in these conversations was a feeling of betrayal. I was suprised by this, but I also recognized it and shared the feeling. That the professors had not been clear about what they wanted us to know, and the apparently obscure details they were asking for was regarded as a breach of trust between student and professor. One student said she found the test she took 'insulting'. Another student commented, 'I was starting to like that guy, but now I totally don't trust him. What's the point of working hard for his class when he'll do something like this to you?" From my point of view, these tests indicated a very different way of knowing the subject. I lacked the cultural/social back ground to know what I needed to know. When I asked one of the lecturers how grades fell out on his test, he said the German students did the best, American students not so well, and the Irish students were kind of up and down the scale.
From the Irish students' point of view, they accepted this as par for the course. "You never know what they want you to know. You memorize as much as you can, and if you get a C, you still pass." "No one can get an A here, so why try?" No personal relationship with the professor was assumed: the teacher was someone who did things to you. "If you care, you'll just get disgusted so why bother?" said one Irish student in his fourth year, "Just memorize the exam papers from last year. There's no point in going to the lectures." This alienation suprised me, but the practical approach to high stakes exams made sense. But as someone who does care, , it seemed so dry, so impersonal, so sad to think about course content this way.
My other level of concern is that these tests clearly would not tell the professors anything useful about the classes, about what ideas were being understood, about what concepts might need more attention. It really was busy work for them. In one class, the professor commented to the class, "On the test it seemed like a lot of you were just guessing. That's not good," and that was the only feedback she gave. All she did was tell us we were losers. Well, I thought, if the majority of the class had trouble with the assessment, would that not tell the lecturer something about either the test (it was a bad test) or the class (something about the content needs to be clarified because clearly what you want to get across is not getting across). The professor's automatic assumption that the class was a bunch of slackers was insulting and discouraging.
So what have I learned so far from this? A test is a part of the relationship I have with my students. I need to be responsible with my end of the bargain: I must be clear and fair about what I want students to know and how I ask them to demonstrate it. A test with both identification/definition as well as analysis/synthesis will give me a better portrait of how the class is doing than just one or the other. I need to remember that my students are novices in the topic in which I am an expert. What seems easy to me might still seem hard to them. It is not cheating to be clear up front with my testing expectations for the students, and my tests should reflect what I have emphasized in class. Partial credit is not a bad thing. Testing is a demonstration of my leadership of the class, and I need to be able to demonstrate that I am a person worthy of being trusted with that power.
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