You encounter a course called The Naked Person--What section of the course catalog are you reading and what topic does the course cover?
I've
always felt The Naked Person would be a great title for the biology
department's cadaver lab, but no: the title
was proposed for an introductory course in the Gender Studies program. Someone in a position of power objected: What would outsiders think of they saw The Naked Person listed on the course schedule? (For outsiders read parents or potential donors or prudes.) So the title was changed to something more generic, like Introduction to Gender Studies.
This was years ago. These days all you have to do to offend an outsider is to call a class Introduction to Gender Studies.
Which
is why I'm a little nervous about the title I've proposed for my
first-year seminar class this fall. You're perusing the course schedule
and notice a class called We Don't Need No Education. Appalled?
I
hadn't expected to teach the first-year seminar this fall—or, really,
ever again—but my Later American Novel class got cancelled (again) due
to low enrollment (again), possibly because it didn't have a sexy title.
So I needed a class to fill out my schedule and the brand-new director
of the first-year seminar was looking for another section so here I am
scrambling about looking for a topic, description, textbook, and title.
Over
the years I've taught nearly every version of the first-year seminar,
from the highly regimented lockstep to the teach-whatever-you-like
version. I've taught the seminar on critical thinking, comedy theory,
and nature writing, but I wasn't feeling inspired about any of those
despite the fact that I'm required to submit a title and description in
the next two weeks.
This fall's version of the first-year seminar focuses on transitions to
college, critical thinking, and information literacy, and I'm required
to assign at least 300 pages of reading--but nothing too challenging
because, you know, kids these days. I briefly thought about assigning
Hope Jahren's Lab Girl, which should be required reading for women going
into STEM fields, but I can't choose my clientele so I went looking for
something relevant to a wider variety of students.
Then it hit me: Tara Westover's memoir, Educated.
It has everything: train-wreck parents, familial abuse and indoctrination, grievous bodily harm, and the inspirational story of a student who arrives in college without ever having heard of the Holocaust but nevertheless manages to earn a PhD from Cambridge. (Read more about the book here.) I couldn't put the book down and I hope my students will find it equally compelling, or at least readable.
The
point of the first-year seminar is to help students—many of them
the first in their families to attend college—make the leap to college-level learning, so
they ought to be inspired by the story of a student whose childhood leaves her woefully ill-equipped to succeed in college but who nevertheless prevails.
Westover's
memoir asks us to think about what it means to be educated, both
formally and informally. What is education for, anyway? What
walls do students have to climb to achieve their educational goals, both inside and outside the
classroom? And how do we master the hidden curriculum needed for success
in college if we're the first in our family to attend?
These, I think, are valid questions to tackle in a first-year seminar,
and Westover's memoir will help us tackle them. But what do I call the
class?
This
is when I heard the thump thump of the bass line from "Another Brick in
the Wall." Am I allowed to call my class We Don't Need No Education? Will
any incoming 18-year-olds recognize the allusion? How appalling will it
be to see such, um, colloquial language attached to a class taught by
the most senior member of the English department?
At
this point I don't care. I'm going to submit the title and description
to the new director of the first-year seminar and let him decide whether
it's too risque. I mean, it's not The Naked Person, but the title may be too revealing to make outsiders comfortable. I don't know about anyone else, but I'm okay with that.