LYCHEE: FUN in school and the USA
My friend, a college professor, emailed me:
. . . it makes me insane that my students often radiate intense hostility for me when they fail a test because they didn't do the work b/c they don't think it's important even though they're paying to take these courses. There's nothing right about this logic. I was reading in our union magazine this morning about Schwarzenegger's evil cuts of the Calif. ed budget, and it's just heart-breaking. Pataki's doing similar things here, of course, and the south is shafted, as usual (to use an unpleasant but appropriate term), and it's very disappointing, but we're still beholden to produce all this joy and excitement in our jobs b/c they wouldn't be doable otherwise...
I responded:
It is sad to hear what you say about education at even the college level. Especially the part about how we are supposed to bring pleasantness and cheeriness and, according to my students, FUN, to the classroom. I wish Bush and Arnold would making living in the U.S. more FUN.
She replied :
I love the above line from your e-mail, by the way... AND, if I had a dime for every time I have to tell my students, "This is college, not television, so you get an education for your pain, not entertainment," I could afford more holidays.
I'll have to use that line in my classroom.
posted by Lychee @ 4/05/2005 05:49:00 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
True, true, we do have an educational system envied by other countries but much of that is because, as such a wealthy country, we have a preponderance of resources and infrastructure to devote and a flexible enough social system such that many, many of my students have a career and a family and still come back for college degrees in their 30's, 40's, or 50's. still and all, considering how much money we could be putting towards an education, we put a miniscule fraction of that to good use and, culturally, of course, the existence of phrases like "those who can, do, and those who can't, teach" and our highly adversarial educational system just go to show we don't, as a culture, hold education in high esteem. So, we obviously all know this well, but just to reaffirm that being a good citizen means kvetching and moaning about the myriad weaknesses of our schooling "system..." and housing "system" and "public" health "system," etc. xo, b.
I guess I should mention my struggle with the word FUN. In my school, anyway, it is often used to distinguish something that is not challenging from something that is (i.e. mindless music videos are fun versus reading anything is not fun). The word lacks meaning for me. Even the feel of it in my mouth (go ahead, say it out loud) feels hollow.
Therefore, I agree, Roger Ailes has a good point. I am extremely lucky and much of that has to do with being a United States citizen. However, I must remember that all the benefits I have come from hard work (my own and, moreover, that of many, many others). We cannot just sit back, have 'fun,' and expect everything to be easy and pleasant. I would take Bani's comment about being a good citizen one step further to actually having to do the hard work of keeping ourselves informed and acting on that information -- things that generally are not 'fun.' Similiarly, in education, where we are told we should always make the class 'fun,' sometimes we just have to buckle down and do the not-so-fun work, like phonics and multiplication tables. Maybe Roger will be a guest speaker to explain to my students about how lucky they are.
This is it, Alizarin. Fun in the blog.
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