group discussions & teaching

I am hesitant about copying this here as it comes from a professional writers Web site, but I am very very excited that he has written this, I don't want to forget it, and I would like some of you who still read this blog to read it yourself because (a) it is what I am going through as a student in discussion style group teaching and (b) it is how I feel about proper teaching and the proper role of a teacher.

I also encourage you to check out his other postings. I've been following him for a year. He's an original thinker -- but not in a pompous showy sort of way.

http://bradlisti.com/archives/1580

Art talk makes me uncomfortable.
Aesthetics.
Feelings.
Processes.
It’s better to have different kinds of artists in a room.
Different kinds of people in a room, for that matter.
That’s my feeling.
Put a writer in a room with a sculptor and a bricklayer and a whore.
Put an actor in a room with violinist and a chemist and a eunuch and a Navy SEAL.
Turn the cameras on.
See what happens.
Too many of the same kind is toxic.
Inertia.
Group think.
Self-importance.
Sensitivity.
There’s nothing worse than a roomful of writers sitting around talking about writing.
Just my feeling.
I’m a hypocrite in saying this, of course, as I teach creative writing and moderate such rooms all the time.
But I like to think I do it with a certain measure of self-awareness and restraint.
I like to think I’m aware of the danger.
I have a pretty low opinion of myself as a teacher.
I’m more of a tour guide and a grunt laborer.
That’s how I view the job.
It’s a service position.
Nothing “executive” about it.
Less Yoda, more R2D2.
This, to me, is central to any kind of managerial role, any kind of educational or executive role.
It’s service, at the end of the day.
I work for my students.

....

You poison everything you touch.
You kill the greater organism.
But if you’re a boss, and you start from the premise that you work for the people who work for you, you’re likely going to be much more effective.
It’s about service.
It’s about being a white blood cell, 92.4% of the time.
It’s about how can I help.
It’s not that simple.
But really it kind of is.
I always tell my students that they’re not allowed to talk about their processes.
Their creative processes.
My process….
Learning how to deal with my process….
I tell them if they ever start talking about their “process” in my class, they’ll get an F-minus.
Not even an F.
An F-minus.
I’m sort of kidding when I say that.
I’m not actually gonna give them an F, but I really don’t want them to talk about it.
And it’s hard to be in a creative writing workshop and not use the word “process.”
Try it sometime over a 16-week semester.
It’s annoying.
Even I wind up saying it on occasion.
I’ll slip up.
Catch myself.
Castigate myself in front of the class.

...

And then he goes onto something entirely different, as he generally does.

Art should be discussed, but it should also be regulated. That is the role of an instructor, I feel. Not a role that many of my professor necessarily understand or feel compelled to enact, and even one professor in particular who is rather better than the rest, I would have to pompously remark is not terribly good at leading discussion either. She spends a great deal of time talking about issues, which I enjoy, but when it comes time to have the students talk, it all sort of veers off into no mans land. It is difficult, no doubt. But I've had instructors who are able to do it quite brilliantly and am a bit confused as to why so many of my grad professors find it so difficult.

Self-importance. Brad points out. It is something which is prevalent like the black death in discussion lead classes. There is always one or more student who spend most of class tooting his own horn. One girl in particular in one of my classes not only spends a great deal of time arguing against whatever is being proposed by another student and likes to relate any discussion to personal theses of past and present. Relating to Brad's refusal to allow his students to discuss their creative processes.

If you are going to have a discussion based class you must have some sort of lecture that will guide the students to broaden their own understanding of the issues and weed out any discussion of their ego-centric feelings on the subjects. I don't care where you are -- undergrad, post grad, phd -- there is always time for improvement, and the best teachers, and the best classes, are those where the student is demanded to not merely reiterate his/hers own views, but expand them or alter them altogether -- to see another side of the issue.

This is as important, if not more so, than teaching a student the skills of arguing with others about issues. You have to have a good understanding of the issues, their varied properties, before properly arguing about them. But my classes rely on students to only regurgitate what they were taught in undergrad. And it is infuriating to witness, although I feel like I am certainly learning what not to do when (if) I become a professor.