NOV. 8. Yeah, yeah, we'll know who's going to be the next president. Big deal. Discard your foolish notions of what's important. Mere elections crumble before the truly momentous occasions of life. That Wednesday, Prof. Michael Levenson will reveal why Donald Barthelme's Snow White got onto the reading list for ENGL 383. I've started to ignore political reports, because I already know as much as I want about the candidates - no mysteries left there. But on Nov. 8, I will be listening raptly to the lecture, eager to understand how Barthelme replaced Seamus Heaney, the Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet and Beowulf translator.
A class is more than the professors who teach it, and students outnumber them many times over. We also pay for the privilege of hearing their explanations and interpretations of what they require us to read. If the University really wants to embody Jeffersonian principles, the selection of material should be made through the democratic process. Students should have a say in the materials read for their classes. Academic student self-governance!
When approached with this alternative, Prof. Levenson pointed out that a graduate student once held a seminar in which students brought their favorite novels to be studied, but "she was very unhappy with the results." Direct election of the reading list may not be the way to go. Some would fail to take their academic experience seriously, choosing books they've already read to minimize the workload. Also, first-year students taking RELG 265 seldom have enough knowledge of bioethics to suggest what books or topics should be covered - that's why we have introductory courses.
At the same time, many students take great interest in what they learn, even beyond its impact on the Almighty GPA. By their third and fourth years, they often understand a great deal about their particular fields of study. Greater student input would most benefit upper-level courses in the humanities.
Classes such as Organic Chemistry and Accounting inherently limit the amount of choice exercised, as students must acquire certain knowledge, and we learn to hate most of those textbooks equally. In departments ranging from anthropology to English to religious studies, however, professors control a great deal of what students must learn to complete the course successfully. The annual shuffle of 400 level seminars in English, for example, means students who take ENAM 482 from different professors will have entirely different experiences and knowledge.
Students can and do affect what ends up filling the University Bookstore's shelves. Levenson noted that he has received two emails in the last week with suggestions for next year's class. He and Prof. Stephen Cushman responded to complaints made last year about the lack of diversity in the reading by adding Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God for the Fall 2000 class. Levenson said they decided, "It would be appropriate to have more writers of color, particularly African-American writers." Like Cushman and Levenson, good professors "make choices based on how students engage with the texts." Moreover, all University teachers hear from their students in the form of end-of-semester course evaluations.
Yet the current system of getting student input only after we have already taken the class does not benefit us. If we do not like what we are reading this semester, our comments could improve the experience of the students taking the class next year - although they may hate what we love - but that does not help us. Nor does it make our next class any better.
Instead of hearing what students want just after they've failed to get it, professors should start soliciting comments before class begins. Despite the vast quantity of course action forms signed and classes dropped during the first weeks of each semester, we have some idea of what we'll be taking well before we return to Grounds. Much of the time, though, we don't know what we'll be studying. "Feminist Theory and Methods" gives little clue to the materials that will be the backbone of the class.
To maximize students' intellectual engagement in the class, professors can send emails to registered students, asking for their suggestions in the choice of course reading. An open forum would foster the habit of extracurricular interest in the subject, as students discuss with each other what they want to get out of a class. If we want a better intellectual community at the University, we need to give students the feeling of being more than passive receptacles of Knowledge handed from On High.
Registration for spring classes opens in less than a month - do you know what you want to learn?
(Pallavi Guniganti is a Cavalier Daily viewpoint writer.)
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