Smooching artificial authority: the cult of academic idolatry

Last issue's staff box echoed some of my frustrations about spending 30Gs a year on bland classes, but what disturbs me more than teaching styles is the acquiescence of so many students. Respect for teachers and speakers is too easily twisted into reverence, so that lack of proper deference is seen as disrespect.

Last week I was supposed to be teaching a particular unit in a class with a group of students. We were less than fully prepared to lecture, so the teacher (understandably) jumped into the discussion to fill the gaps. She told us to stop her if she treaded onto our discussion territory; she just wanted to make sure the topic was covered. Because she is human, I took her at her word, and cut periodically into the discussion. Every time I did this, I could feel the class glaring at me, like I wasn't supposed to check a teacher.

Before our next class, I told her I got the impression that I was acting completely out of line. She laughed. She told me she was glad I cut in; she was only talking because she wasn't sure how prepared we were. When I got to class, though, one of my co-teachers told me I shouldn't have cut the teacher off. "She knows a lot," was her reason. "She needs to talk." Of course she knows more than we do about the class - that's why she's the teacher. But when we are assigned to lead class discussion, she becomes a supplement to our knowledge. She has researched these topics more than we have, because that's her job. Our ideas, however, are still valid.

This wasn't even a scenario alluded to in the article, requiring guts on the part of the student voicing opinions in the middle of a teacher's masturbatory soliloquy. She told us to talk. How much more encouragement do we need?

This wasn't the only time I felt respect for a teacher's knowledge mutate into worship. Once I called a teacher by her first name, and people were aghast. So many times, other students have instilled in me a certain fear for particular professors. When I take their classes and talk to them, however, I discover that they are not so fearsome. They talk to me like I am a real person with real ideas.

When I treat my professors like people, I feel like I am breaking some serious codes of respect, and that's crazy. Perhaps in some school situations, artificial measures of respect are necessary for discipline. But we're supposed to be capable of adult discourse here at Oberlin; why are we so deferential?

In a class I had first-year, we were assigned to write responses to an essay by Francis Bacon. I wrote "An Open Letter to Francis Bacon" in the second person, and my classmates told me I was brave. For some reason, they thought it took balls to speak directly to some dead guy whom I had never even met. Why is that so impressive? Was he going to jump out of the pages and fight me if I crossed him?

The cult of academic idolatry is at its worst when speakers come. True, we've had some amazing people lecture. Angela Davis and Kwame Ture have done things I barely dream about. They give speeches, we listen. Fine. Then comes the question-and-answer session. A friend of mine told me she feels bad about leaving before the questions, but they always seem so pointless to her, since actual questions are rarely addressed. Honestly, I don't think many people ask questions with an expectation that they will be answered. Questions are jumpstarts for minispeeches.

Afterwards, everyone flocks to the reception to get their pictures taken, or to ask more questions. I never go, because I'm sure they have no time for quality discussions, and I already heard them speak. Speeches are one thing, but dialogue is another. Even now, I feel like I am being ridiculously mouthy when I say I really have no interest in a dialogue with anyone who won't listen to me. I'm not saying I don't want to hear people's ideas, but the forum for that is a speech. If I want Angela Davis to hear anything I say- if I treat her like a real person instead of a goddess, I feel sacrilegious. I don't understand, though, what is so sinful and disrespectful about communicating with someone on equal terms.

Respect should come in response to someone's ideas, not from artificial constructions of authority. And it isn't uppity of us to demand reciprocal respect, even if we are younger, and have less research to support our claims.