Comments on: When Do You Shelve a Course?

By: Jonathan Dresner

Jonathan Dresner — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 06:10:00 +0000

Those of us at the lower end of the institutional spectrum get that “two sections” experience pretty regularly: I’ve taught two sections of a basic survey (Western or World) in a semester at least a half-dozen times in my nine year career. Even with an old chestnut like that, with identical class sizes and rooms, I don’t think I’ve ever had two sections really respond similarly. That said, I also became aware that I did not really make the same presentations both times (though someone who is a little less free-hand with lectures might be more consistent), nor did I want to. I’m going to be teaching two sections of World every semester for the foreseeable future, so I’m going to have to work something out.

I’ve taken the opportunity of the move to shelve an entire curriculum, actually: the critical mass of student population and student interest wasn’t enough to sustain my three-semester sequences for Japan and China, though I thought they were historiographically and pedagogically superior to a two-semester sequence. The middle course, in particular, seems to have confused students a bit, and too many people thought that the courses had to be taken in order.

By: Carl

Carl — Fri, 30 May 2008 17:03:58 +0000

Yeah, I also teach ‘the same’ course differently each time, use them as opportunities to read and think about new things, discard even successful strategies on the theory that a fresh version of an imperfect course will make a better pedagogical impact than a stale version of a perfected course. In short, I’m an accreditation assessments nightmare.

I do agree that not just courses but questions get stale; as an intellectual historian I see this happening all the time. This is why, although I teach gender and am a committed third-waver, I’m a bit bemused by colleagues who fulminate against the women students who do not seem to grasp how they are oppressed by a profoundly sexist culture. I venture to say well, if they’re here and doing what they want to do and have experienced no notable impediment to that, in what sense are they oppressed? Are they simply wrong? Isn’t that what victory would look like?

Our struggles provide an anchor for our identity, which creates a very powerful interest in the continuance of those struggles. It’s really alarming when the younguns don’t identify, but that’s in the nature of historical change, isn’t it? Don’t we really want them to be able to pull up that anchor and sail more freely?