In the chapter “Integrating Traditions” from his book Rhetoric at the Margins, David Gold quotes Julian Roebuck and Komanduri Murty as saying that “black colleges also tend to share several important institutional features that contribute to students success, most notably a strong service ethic, close student-teacher relationships, and a highly personal, at times authoritarian teaching style” (Gold 61). I was very interested in how this description would play out in our colleges today. Here are my thoughts:
1. Strong Service Ethic
Non-existent in modern colleges (at least to my knowledge and excluding the few clubs that promote service oriented learning). But Service across the curriculum required by all students in one form or another is non-existent, but I think it should be a requirement. Service is at the center of well-being and commitment. I think a service oriented program would also help students become more attached to the subject and the school at large.
2. Close student-teacher relationships
I think both universities that I have attended have had close student-teacher relationships, yet after reading about Tolson and his students I think the idea of a close relationship between teachers and students is defined differently. Not many students go to professor’s houses until the wee-hours of the morning to practice debate. I think the times are different, but students do benefit from the attention of professors.
3. Personal / Authoritarian teaching style
Although I am not an advocate of the Authoritarian teaching style, I would argue for more respect from students…I do really like the idea of making teaching personal. I do see teaching as a performance which does imply a bit of impersonal, but I think we can be fairly transparent in our teaching. I think that the occasional personal story often helps students grasp a concept that may have been foreign to them otherwise.
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Excellent notes, JP!!
ReplyDeleteI just wanted to comment on Tolson's relationship to his students. Although he is a knowledgeable and successful professor, but his style cannot be applied nowadays simply because each generation has its own teaching style . In my culture, parents do not teach and treat their children as the way they had been taught (the parents) because they know that their children belong to another different generation!!
JP, I just watch the movie The Great Debaters (only once so there are things I cannot remember about it) but my comment is that I did notice a closer connection between those students and professors than what I witness in my experiences as a college student as far as student/professor relationships; and wasn't that Marshall, TX just as Gold writes of in his chapter also? 1944 doesn't seem to be that long ago when I think of how fast the years of my life have flown by, yet I don't see the "service" ethic you want to see as a requirement. Your right, our [higher education] priorities have changed from being service oriented programs and people into a priority of showing the number of successful graduates walking across stage. I think this prior mentioned service ethic is exactly what Mayo shares as a writer in his later chapters.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. And thanks for your note about The Great Debaters, Debbie. A must see!
ReplyDeleteA decade or two ago, we began to see a major upsurge in service-learning requirements across the country, usually in university studies courses like first-year composition and history. A journal dedicated to this work in writing and rhetoric emerged (Reflections), and the shift in focus reveals an interesting trend in service learning. Too many ended up working from a very problematic understanding of the "other," ladling soup for homeless individuals the young student never got to know and missing the whole point of service to others by seeing it only as a one-way street. We give so others can benefit. Reciprocity was lost in far too many instances.
It is begin revitalized through smart, deeply reciprocal projects that take advantage of the opportunities for learning embedded in these service sites. Projects like the ones you've read abo ut in this class (in Brooklyn and in Reading, Pennsylvania). Projects like Mathie's "street papers" in Chicago and, later, Boston.
Much to learn from these projects. Perhaps we can help lay the groundwork for more.