Sharing the Educational Investment

Empowering Students

fter 25 years of public education, from kindergarten to a Ph.D., I came to this recognition: I was a bad student.

Let me clarify. I earned straight As, won awards and scholarships, appeared to class on time, and did not really know the meaning of the word “parTAY.” In retrospect, I continued my schooling well into adulthood precisely because I was successful at it; being a student became an identity that I associated with self-esteem.

Now, as a professor of English, I would have some ambivalence about having a student like me. I was a passive learner. I rarely raised my hand to contribute to discussion. In the absence of loftier goals, greater self-direction, or more tangible rewards, I worked for grades. And most condemning, I was all too willing to accept the version of the world delivered up by my instructors.

My own history as a student thus informs the kind of experience I want to provide for my students—and what to demand from them. I reject the model of the college professor that popular culture celebrates, the eccentric malcontent who nonetheless inspires a cult of personality. Such a model reinforces the notion that learning can only take place if the individual is positioned as a spectator held in thrall by presence of genius.

I learned from my teaching mentors to reject what philosopher and educator Paulo Friere has called the banking system of education, whereby students are seen as mere receptacles to be filled by the all-knowing teacher. Rather, in asking students to rise to the challenge of teaching themselves and their peers, I want to inspire them to take charge of their education. I want them to see the classroom as a community with a shared investment, one that extends beyond the university.

I can say this, in part, because English is a discipline whereby standardized tests and chapters in a textbook do not determine the curriculum. Nevertheless, English professors encounter a different prejudice: teaching literature seems to lack tangibility, a clear link between skill and final product. After all, what exactly does an English teacher know that can’t be transmitted in the act of picking up a book and reading it for oneself? One reads for aesthetic pleasure, a pleasure that is often expressed with deceptive blandness, such as “liking” a book. Such enjoyment is seen as being intensely private. Critical thinking, some of my students say, “ruins” a book.

There is value in the exchange of potentially contradictory ideas. As a teacher, I work to create the meeting ground for that type of delight, which is, at heart, a civic pleasure.

I teach ethnic American literature. Reading such literature broadens cultural knowledge. Better yet, engaging it analytically might initiate a thought process that enlightens. I want students to think critically about how history is represented and how rhetorical arguments construct the messages that literature imparts. This requires more than rote learning.

I want to leave my students with the feeling that their education is not yet complete. My hope as an educator lies in the idea that being “exposed” to literature might empower individuals to act more ethically, judiciously, and with critical open-mindedness. It is, perhaps, a tall order, but it mirrors the goals of the very materials I engage. My philosophy as a teacher takes its cue both from my own experience as a seen-but-not-heard student and from the books themselves; I work toward some of the same ends as literature, when it pushes us to envision utopian possibilities in an imperfect world and to call that world into account.

—Leslie Bow