Another brick in the (educational) wall

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.