I've been talking with a lot, and I mean a lot, of professors
off-list from around the country as a result of their responses to my
latest "On Teaching" Random Thought series.  Most feel trapped in a limbo,
stuck between two worlds.  At times they have what W.E.B.Dubois called "a
two-ness":  living in the two worlds of researching/publishing scholarship
and teaching, not quite completely belonging to either or allowed to
belong to either.  I know how they feel, I, too, have felt that way--and,
at times, still do.  I have scholarly roots with a national scholarly
reputation and a scholarly resume a mile long.  In that world of the
scholar is where I was trained.  Now I am solely living as a teacher and
have something of a reputation and a resume a mile long.  In this world I
have trained myself.  I can't forsake the former.  I wouldn't want to,
although I now only engage in it by reading voraciously to "keep abreast"
or occasionaly to consult.  "They" tell me--well, no one has told me to my
face--that it is a conflict between "content" and "process,"  that in the
latter world where I now reside that is too much process and not enough
content.  To be honest, no one has told me what "too much" and "not
enough" mean.  Let me give you an example why I reject that.

        I once wrote, and it bears constant repeating I wish studnets
realized that history is not as it is too often portaryed:  a dull
collection of meaningless facts about dead people, a series of flatten
names and dates whose significance is only in memorization for a test, a
collection of maps and charts and diagrams and statistics.  I would hope
they would begin to understand that history it is about real, flesh and
blood, complicated and mysterious and unique individuals who itched,
urinated, scratched, laughed, ate, made love, cried, dreamed, hated
fought, killed, saved, loved, and hurt; who--known or unknown--by their
mere presence made a difference however supposedly slight or monumental;
who had strengths and weakness;  who were violent and peaceful, who
dreamed and feared, who dared and cowered, who risked and played it safe,
who achieved and failed, who fell and stayed down, who fell and got up to
strove, who were criminal and law-abiding, who were resolute and
indecisive, who led and who followed, all of whom were unique individuals.
That is a demanding demand, to bring the material to life, to give the
students a living experience, to provide meaning and relevance, in almost
every subject.  That is the why of field studies, service, internships,
shadowing, mock trials, exchanges. etc.

        So, I seized an opportunity that I slowly realized that I had been
missing for years.  I devised a new project this semester.  Some might
call it a "stealth lecture."  It is really a form of replay of the old TV
show, "You Are There."  I call it "The News Conference."  The students
were required to read the chapters in the text book on the late 1940s and
1950s.  They'd read about the beginning of the Cold War, the Berlin
Airlife, Joe McCarthy, "white flight," the Korean War, Levittown, Rock and
Roll, Eisenhower, Sputnik, etc.  Each student had to imagine him/herself
as a reporter.  His or her editor had given each community two
assignments.  The first was to write 450 wor print column on what life was
really like in the late 1940s and 1950s beyond the textbook scholarly
analysis.  The second was to broadcast a 90 second feature piece on the
same subject over either TV or radio.  The students researched the period
described in two assigned chapters and prepared questions to ask someone
about anything who actually lived in that era.  No one could ask a
question already asked.  No one could ask a second question until everyone
has asked a question.  The person they intereviewed was me.  I was born in
1940 and graduated high school in 1958.  American Graffiti was a partial
biography.  I told them nothing that they didn't ask about and everything
they asked about.  It was a challenge, but I had to be vulnerable and
authentic.  But, what they asked.  I told them about radio and listening
to Fibber McGree and Molly secretly after going to bed, and of our
one-inch TV screen my grandfather bought in 1947 and placed a twelve inch
magnifying stand in front it and how everyone in the neighboor watched the
Friday night fights from Kew Gardens.  I told them about how the world
stopped on Tuesday night to watch Uncle Miltie, of Captain Midnight, Tom
Corbit-Space Cadet, Tales of Tomorrow, Howdy Doody (I was once in the
Peanut Galley and squeezed Clarabell's horn), Kukla, Fran, and Ollie, What
In The World, Omnibus, Playhouse 90.  I told how we teenagers double-dated
and went to drive-in movies--but never saw the movie--and how we went to
Richard's, the local drive-in restaurant, or to While Castle.  Yes,
Virginia, there was a pre-McDonalds world.  "I once heard 'the Beats.'
Greenwich Village was our hangout on Saturdays when we were teens.  We all
thought they were boring and sucked....drank watered down rum and cokes
for fifty cents....there was The Couch, the Purple Onion, the Pink Pussy
Cat....we could drive with a learners permit at fifteen and that's when we
started drinking....no one was serious about drinking and driving in those
days....I explained how I came to elementary school with pockets stuffed
with stacks of rubber-banded baseball cards, showed them how I flipped
baseball cards, and how I clipped cards that are now worth thousands with
wooden clothespins to my bicycle to make it sound like a motorcycle.  I
told them I how I was once brutalized by the police in the days before
lawyering up and Miranda and was rescured by my Uncle Benny who was
Assistant District Attorney of Brooklyn.  I told them of seeing a
torpedoed tanker burning on the horizon and how in 1944 the Shore Patrol
confiscated the film in my Brownie box camera because the aircraft
carriers, battleships, and other vessels docked in Brooklyn Navy Yard was
in the background.  To this day I remeber that sailor's admonishing words:
"Loose lips sinks ships."  We talked about starting each class day with a
prayer and about being given off afternoons from elementary school to
attend religious school.  And, I described how I was caught by a teacher
on a sand lot playing baseball instead of being in Hebrew school, dragged
back to the principal, threatened that my family might be mistaken for
godless Communists if I didn't go to Hebrew school, and then paddled on my
bare butt with five hard wacks.  I described the Civil Defense sirens,
atomic attack drills of diving under the desks or leaning against the
hallway walls.  I explained how one day we came to school and were told we
had to learn a new pledge of allegiance.  They laughed as I listed ten
westerns, two Movietones, three serials, and fifty cartoons I'd see a
Saturday in the Delancy theater for a dime.  They were mesmerized as I
described riding the bus bumpers at the tender age of six or seven,
stealing piece of ice off the ice trucks that were delivering ice for our
"ice-boxes," riding home-made skatesboards over the cobble stones by
holding on to car bumpers in heavy traffic, of having the good fortune to
being able to leave the City during the hot, polio plagued summer and live
at my aunt's "kochalain" bungalow colony in the Borscht Belt of the
Catskills (they came to the office to see the cow skull hanging on the
wall that I had discovered during a hike in the hills in 1947), of how I
made a stick ball bats out of a broomstick and of being a two man-hole
hitter, of jumping the alleys as we kids played on the roofs of the
tenements of Eastside New York, of waiting each Thursday at the newstand
on Ludlow for the delivery of the new comics of Captain Marvel, the Green
Hornet, the Shadow, Scrooge McDuck, Archie, Men at War, G.I. Joe,
Superman, Batman, Flash, Captain American, etc, etc, etc.  "We kids were
warned that Rock and Roll was a communist plot....I remember when Elvis
came on the Ed Sullivan show....I knew Mr. Levitt....we had prejudices in
'technicolor'....didn't know any Joe McCarthy....we ducked our hair with
goops of Pomade....had a stockpile of canned food on shelves in a basement
room and gallons of ice cream in the freezer.....school gave up classes in
slow dancing....could only slow dance at school dances....who paid
attention to the news....only news we had as kids was the Movietones in
the theaters but we went our popcorn when they came on....teachers cuffed
us around if....never smoked and always felt left out....no sex?  Let me
tell you about necking....hated sanding and varnishing the station wagon
each summer....we called each other names like....we stood out in the
backyard and saw that little light going over head at night and we were
scared shitless....wore coat and tie on dates....never wore dungarees to
school....we called it a 'poon car'....girls always wore dresses and
skirts to school and one dates.....one prank I pulled in high
school....loved Woolworth's....those girdles....Jahn's had the best ice
cream....piped the World Series into the classrooms....played
soccer....now those charlotte rouses and chocolate egg creams....read the
Hardy Boys, Landmark history books, Classic Commic Books....T.V. trays and
T.V. dinners....got the mumps, chicken pocks, and measels in one
summer....78 records....had my knuckles rapped with a wooden ruler....most
of us didn't go to college....only looked at the pictures in LIFE, LOOK,
COLLIERS, and NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC that were lying around the house....we
were very high middle class until my father went bankrupt....my first true
love was....we called them 'Rocks'....ever hear of a 'mangle'....our
junior high and high classes and teams were integrated....

        On and on it went for two days:  questions, answers, laughter,
descriptions, smiles, disbelief, snickering, amazement, attentiveness,
involvement, engagement.  I thought of events and pulled up names that I
hadn't thought about in over fifty years!

        You should have read their columns and watched how they aired
their feature pieces.

        "Content" v. "process?"  "Information transmission"  v.
"character building?"  "Teacher-centered v. student centered?"  "Teaching
v. learning?"  I think not.  There is no "versus" in any method,
technique, assignment, project I have devised, whether it is the daily
"words for the day,"  the beginning-of-semester community building
"Getting To Know Ya" and "Rules of the Road" exercises, or the discussion
of "Tidbits"  or the "Dr. Seuss," "Hollywood," "Salvador Dali," "Rodin,"
"Scavenger Hunt," "Bruce Springsteen," "Broadway," "Story Board," "News
Conference," and the summarizing "N.Y. Times" projects.

        It never is for me a conflict of "versus;" it is never for me a
confrontation of "either/or;" it is never for a war of this or that.
"The lines are clearly drawn and defined," as one professor said, only
because a lot of us draw them and draw them that way.  I don't accept such
a cut and dry, black and white depiction.  I prefer, as Steven Sample
might say, "thinking gray."  For me it is a conscious journey to search
for, discover, articluate my "why," and then consciously and deliberately
let that purpose guide me.  For me, it is only an on-going struggle and a
never-ending experimenting to find and keep the "and" in my "why."  After
a decade of reading, studying, discussing, exchanging, listening,
experimenting, and learning about learning, I just generally no longer
find that "why" and "and" solely and generally effective in traditional
professorial lecture, student note-taking, professorial testing giving,
student test taking, professorial grade giving, student grade getting
format.  Did that, for a long time, for almost three decades, and honestly
never felt it all that rewarding or fulfilling--or instilling a life-long
love of learning in most students.  But, that is me.  I never ask anyone,
nor should I, to copy what I do.  They can't; they are not me.  I do ask
them, as anyone should ask of me, to hear me out with a true openness, for
while they cannot copy me they can think about and reflect what I and what
I do represent as a vision.  To put it another way, Buckminster Fuller
once said, if you want to change how somebody thinks, give up. You cannot
change how any person thinks.  You can give them a tool the use of which
will lead them to think about thinking differently.  That is what happened
to me.  I became a different tool; I began to use different tools.  I
began to think, feel and do differently.  Nevertheless, there are times I
feel as if that attitude isn't reciprocated.  Others, on and off my
campus, for a wide variety of reasons, exert a spoken and unspoken, subtle
and not so subtle peer pressure preferring, wantint, almost demanding
I--and others around them--be what they want us to be, be comfortable with
what they want us to be comforable, do what they want us to do, say what
they want us to say--which is usually what they are, with what they are
comfortable, what they do, and what they say.

        So, I understand when others feel like a morph (any Trekkie would
understand) between the two worlds that are often at odds with each other,
requiring completely different skills and perspectives, imposing totally
different demands, demanding different focuses, having fundamentally
different goals, having the eyes on different prizes.

        I cannot speak for those with whom I'm speaking.  The only thing I
can do is to struggle to make the best of it, resist the pressure to
impose and be imposed upon, find ways to merge the two worlds into one,
and be true to myself and be authentic to each student.

Make it a good day.

                                                       --Louis--


Louis Schmier                            www.therandomthoughts.com
Department of History                    www.halcyon.com/arborhts/louis.html
Valdosta State University
Valdosta, Georgia 31698                    /~\    /\ /\
(229-333-5947)                     /^\    /   \  /  /~ \     /~\__/\
                                  /   \__/     \/  /     /\ /~      \
                            /\/\-/ /^\___\______\_______/__/_______/^\
                          -_~     /  "If you want to climb mountains, \ /^\
                             _ _ /      don't practice on mole hills" -\____