teaching as extortion
Sarah Shun-Lien Bynum's short story "Accomplice" contains an interesting argument:
Teaching...[is] a form of extortion; you [are] forever trying to extract from your students something they [don't] want to part with: their attention, their labor, their trust.
The main character -- Ms. Hempel -- is a 7th grade teacher, but her thoughts are also applicable to students throughout the educational spectrum...even in higher ed. One of the nice things about receiving tenure is gaining more freedom to experiment with ways to work with student resistance. Hopefully after the
strategic positioning battles end GCers will have a positive space in which to do that.
Posted by wrjacobs at May 12, 2005 04:20 PM
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