Well, the condom came off the class.  No safe teaching in one class Friday.  But,
it was a "wow" class.  I'll just say that I had to put aside the planned beginning of a
project presentation and let spontaneity kick in when a student asked a question at the
beginning of the class about what was to her a critical "personal" situation in another
class.  All hell broke loose before I could open my mouth.  Hands shot up, people called
out, cliques of whispering side conversations began.  I did more sitting back at watching
and listening than participating and guiding.  It was a cacophony of total and partial
agreement and disagreement:  African-Americans agreeing and disagreeing with each other;
African-American ladies agreeing and disagreeing with non-African-American ladies; ladies
agreeing and disagreeing with guys; African-American guys disagreeing with the
non-African-American ladies; self-proclaimed liberals agreeing and disagreeing with
self-proclaimed conservatives.  I won't belabor the point.  No bloc voting or
lock-stepping unanimity anywhere at anytime among anyone on any part of the issue.
Everyone seemed to be that proverbial variation on a theme and exception to the rule.  All
weekend I thought about that discussion and the cacophony of responses in journals to it
that cut across any lines anyone could draw:  liked, disliked, excited, bored, asserting,
questioning, interested, insightful, stunned, "no big deal," "what a class," "could care
less," "that was an important class," "see no point."   I was particularly sensitive to
what had occurred because of a brief discussion of "traditional" versus "real" diversity
that I and my good friend, Todd Zakrajsek have been having on and off since Lilly South..
This is what I came up with about that spur-of-the moment fifty minutes as I hit the
streets this pre-dawn morning.

	First it was the philosophers; now it's the scientists.  They tell us that human
beings are social animals, that we're hotwired to connect. We have a natural desire for
attachment.  We instinctively feel and are affected, and sometimes mimic, even to a small
extent, the mood, manners, and actions of the people around us.  The result is that most
people are pretty nice when they go eyeball-to-eyeball, one-on-one with each other, when
they know each other's names, when their faces are clearly seen, when they rip out labels,
when they step out from being boxed in and separated by stereotypes to relate personally
person to person, when they experience the joy of being in each other's presence.  

	But, what is so often ignored on our campuses is that none of this applies when
the natural individual heterogeneity is replace by an artificial homogeneity, when people
become impersonal, when they relate to herded into corrals of generalities, when labels
are slapped over and hide their names and faces, when the are converted into numbers, when
they are bureaucratically identified as "units," when their uniqueness is torn from their
souls, when their spirit is amputated, when their blood is suck out from them, when they
are de-boned into stick figures.  It’s as if the operation of an entirely different part
of the brain kicks in and triggers a different set of values.  People become different
people to each other.  Warmth, love, awareness, caring, support, encouragement, joy,
empathy, respect, sensitivity, closeness, and nurturing--those things that make life in
the classroom worth living--are replaced by weeding out, coldness, insensitivity,
distance, unawareness, indifference, and, as I teach in the Holocaust course, worse. 

	The result is that so many of us profs get student behavior so wrong; they step
away from and don't reflect on or think about or don't get involved with the world of
emotion, social relationships, personal lives, motives, morality, expectations,
imagination, faith, and love; they surrender humanity and reality to statistics, charts,
diagrams, as well as to distorting assumption and presumption; they drop their guard--if
they ever had it up--against treating students as a consistent, constant homogenous group
or collage of groups.  Consequently, they commit a host of "attribution errors."  That's
why when it comes to "students" and what I call "traditional diversities" we have to find
ways to replace mathematics with humanity, break down fences, destroy boxes, cast aside
stereotype and generalities, and get beyond labels.  After all, to be realistic, teaching
is about the unique individual, whom I call "the real diversity."  That in itself makes
teaching an art fraught with impromptu, messiness, inconvenience, discomfort, and
uncertainty rather than a science directed by neat, structured, and guaranteed
predictability.

	To all my Jewish friends, Susie and I wish you a very happy Passover.  And, to all
our Christian friends, we wish you a happy Easter.  


Make it a good day.

      --Louis--


Louis Schmier                                http://www.therandomthoughts.com
Department of History  
http://www.therandomthoughts.edublogs.org               
Valdosta State University             
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