CONFESS: the first thing you want to find out at RateMyProfessors.com is whether or not you got a chili pepper--that is, whether or not you're considered hot. If you did get one, you will immediately convey that fact to others, with the proper mixture of incredulity and irony. If you didn't get one, you will privately remind yourself of the way that teaching evaluations are, after all, a mere popularity contest based on the most superficial criteria. And perhaps the chili pepper is indeed one of these, according to Amy Baylor, a professor of Instructional Systems at Florida State University. She has designed digitized agents ranging from dorky to hot and invited students to choose. top choices are strong-jawed men with muscular builds, and women with long hair and prominent breasts, regardless of any other factors. In Baylor's opinion, the students always don't pick the one for (Lagorio 38), though I suppose that depends on what best we're talking about. But here I'd like to consider the chili pepper as gesturing, at least, toward something less superficial than titties and bums. That something has been called an erotics of instruction. As with any erotics, there is a wide range in the ways this term is interpreted and put into practice. Teaching, of course, works much like seduction: we want our students to want something they didn't know they wanted. Etymologically, seduction is a matter of leading someone to one side of the path they habitually follow: seductive teachers may pretend to tread that path for a while (beginning where the is at) but ultimately they want their students to go somewhere else. How can this be done? Logic, careful explanation--these help but by themselves are not enough to incite change; things need to be proved upon our pulses. And in the classroom, as elsewhere, the pulse quickens by a kind of contagion, picking up on another personas energy. Indeed, the transfer of energy may be the most lasting aspect of what goes on in the classroom. Your students are likely to forget almost all the information you give them as soon as the exam is over. What they will remember, with any luck, is your particular way of approaching the subject, and your passion for it. That these are yours means that it is ultimately you who becomes unforgettable, like Mr. Chips or Miss Jean Brodie. And this presents certain pitfalls for all concerned. I'm not talking about the usual pitfall of eroticized instruction: when a sexual relationship is carried on concurrently with the teaching relationship, it is a clear breach of professional ethics. No, I'm referring to subtler temptations, not the least of which is the desire to be adored. A teacher's passion and energy may be part of a performance that, like any performance, is aimed at getting applause. And it likely will get that applause in the form of high evaluations, in an age where the classroom is in competition with television. Admittedly the energy that galvanizes a classroom is partly a matter of performance, even physical performance: the teacher's body can also be a pedagogical tool. In the interests of making my point I have swaggered, galumphed, fallen flat on the floor, and done brief modern dances. Of course my real point may well have been that I could do those things and that doing those things would help make me memorable. There is a sense, though, in which the more my energies (of whatever kind) expand, the more those of my students contract into an appreciative but ultimately passive spectatorship. Thus teachers in this mode, admired and admirable, may actually be doing a perverse disservice to their students, as John Glavin has pointed out: The more effective the teacher, the more likely he--or she--is to snake the bear false witness: the more engaging, the more memorable, the more lastingly impressive the teacher, the more profoundly perjured the student (14). We all know of graduate students whose admiration has led to imitation, and little more: having worked in their mentor's area and in their mentor's manner, they are then unable to generate their own original contributions. …
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Nov 1, 2024
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