Pedagogical Minute   

A Weekly Service of the College of Arts & Sciences

What DON'T people understand about what we do?

The last couple of entries have looped loose circles around the idea of getting our students to think about the disciplines as professions – not just information we possess, but things we do, the ways we do them; the questions we ask, the problems we address, and the methods we use.

 It can also be useful to do an inventory of the misconceptions experience has taught us students often carry about. In “To a Waterfowl,” Donald Hall writes of an experience familiar to every English professor: 

Women with hats like the rear ends of pink ducks

applauded you, my poems.

These are the women whose husbands I meet on airplanes

who close their briefcases and ask “what are you in?”

I look in their eyes, and I tell them I am in poetry,

and their eyes fill with anxiety, and with little tears.

“Oh yeah?” they say, developing an interest in clouds.

“My wife, she likes that sort of thing? Hah-hah?

I guess maybe I’d better watch my grammar, huh?”

I leave them in airports, watching their grammar.

 Professors of English not the grammar police, though we are used to having it expected of us. An economist friend tells me he’s given up explaining why he’s not especially good at balancing his checkbook, and has no advice to offer on the matter.  Linguists don’t necessarily speak a lot of languages.

 What misconceptions are in the air about your field, what it does, how and why? Take the time to talk this out with students. Good natured laughter is pretty much guaranteed, and after the chat, they will find themselves on the inside of something which before was a closed door. A big step indeed.