My First Entry on a BLog Where I Share My Ideas with THE WORLD

I’ve used blogs in my German courses in various ways since, I believe, the fall of 2006, and I just read that if you make students use blogs, you should do so, too. And I haven’t before. Oh, I have blogged with my students, but I haven't really blogged for the world. It’s not that I don’t have ideas to share, it’s just that blogging is such a public forum. Yet, I must say to myself, if I want others to read my ideas, then why not blog?

I’ve also not been much of a blog follower. Why is that, I ask myself? Well, I don’t know, except to say that reading of any kind is sometimes an overwhelming act for me. It becomes a burden, because what I read often sparks so many ideas I want to set to paper that I cannot read extensively. If I feel the need to read extensively and then end up reading intensively and writing about it, there is some kind of guilt associated with it. Because colleagues in academia, not to mention publishing venues, always expect one to have read “everything.” (What a cop-out!)

Yet I am willing to change and rethink it all. Perhaps it’s because some of the bloggers I’ve been introduced to by a colleague of mine are people who make sense to me. Maybe I can come out of my shell and find like-minded people, who won’t think there's anything wrong with being different.

Also, recently I’ve been energized by colleagues who want to share ideas. I’ve been encouraged by the exchange that has gone on, the hope that has been engendered, the fun of collaboration.

And so I’m here. To reach out. To find out. To find you, whoever you are. To link to you. To read you, as much (or little) as I am willing and able. To find that exciting exchange, interchange, where a diversity of ideas is okay. Or where ideas even have a place, for far too often we in academia draw lines in the sand and forget to have a dialogue across them. We forget to cuss and discuss in an atmosphere of mutual respect.

…which leads me to the draft of an article Pete Smith and Jeannine Hirtle crafted, where they talk about engendering mutual respect and trust among students and between students and their professors/instructors. There are many more ideas in their article that they cite or that they came up with, which strike such a chord with me. Some of those ideas I’ve had and written about myself, but never had the courage to say publicly. For I too believe that there can be no honest (and maybe even respectful) discourse between students and their professors if the old hierarchy is maintained. I’m reminded of the scene in A Beautiful Mind when the professor at the prestigious university tells his students that being there with them was probably a waste of their time and definitely a waste of his!

But back to mutual respect and trust. Students cannot be thoughtfully honest if they do not trust that they can be so. If they do not respect their instructor, or worse if their instructor does not respect them, there can be no trust. It is only through mutual respect and trust that an honest dialogue and discussion can take place. A case in point: we in language and literature departments want our students to think critically (or whatever – reflectively, profoundly, rationally) about literature – and other topics. We want students to interpret literature. But often what happens is that we tell students what the interpretation is, and they memorize and learn it for the test, the exam, the master’s or qualifying exam, and any original thinking is bypassed. What if, however, we argued and discussed with our students as equals? What if we said, let me see if I can convince you of my point of view? What if we allowed ourselves the possibility that it might all fail?

There are at least a couple of philosophies of learning. One is the IQ belief: either you have “it” – the intelligence – or you don’t. It seems many people, both inside and outside of academia have that perspective. The other is this: most everyone, with the appropriate background, time, and motivation, can make it through college. I am, as you probably guessed, of the latter opinion. And it’s based on my experience. But more on that later. This post has gone on long enough.

Goodnight.