I love my students

We talk a lot on this blog about pedagogy and other issues related to classroom instruction in the academy. I don’t often participate in those discussions, though I read them avidly, with great interest and appreciation. I suppose it’s because the issues raised there sometimes seem a bit removed from what I encounter at CUNY.  But I posted this post last night on my blog, and spurred on by an appreciative tweet from Henry, I thought I’d share it here. Teaching’s not always like this at CUNY, but it often is. I remember my first semester at Brooklyn College, teaching a nighttime seminar on liberalism and constitutional law. I’ll never forget, about an hour after the class had ended, I walked by the classroom on my way home and there were three students—one from Nigeria, one from Eastern Europe, and one who was African American—still arguing over some passage from On Liberty. It sounds like something out of a movie, and the truth is, it often feels that way. More than 15 years later, I still sometimes fantasize that I’m teaching the next generation of the New York Intellectuals. Only instead of them being the children of East European Jews, they’re from the Caribbean, West Africa, Palestine, Yemen, Turkmenistan. They’re black, they’re Latina, they’re Muslim, they’re working class, they’re Orthodox Jewish, and they come from everywhere.

* * * * * 

I’m not one of those professors who says, “I love my students,” but…I love my students.

This semester, I’m teaching the department capstone seminar. For the first half, I have the students read classics of political economy, from Aristotle through Gary Becker. In the second half, they choose a book about the contemporary political economy, and write an analysis of it through the lens of, or against the grain of, one of our class readings. They also do a class presentation of their final papers, something I haven’t tried since my first year at Brooklyn College.

So tonight was our first night of presentations. One student had chosen as his text Mark Blyth’s Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea, which he used to very powerful effect as a critique of Hayek, whom we had read in class. Then, in the middle of our discussion of his paper, another student asked, “After reading Hayek, do you think you can truly value something if you don’t have to pay for it?” Bam, the conversation’s off!

Another student used Aristotle’s Ethics and his Politics as a launching point for Elisabeth Armstrong’s and Laura Hamilton’s Paying for the Party: How College Maintains Inequality. She did a great analysis of how Aristotelian hierarchies of labor, leisure, and knowledge are reproduced by colleges and universities today. Then, in our discussion of her paper, another student asks, tentatively, timidly, “What…would happen … if we separated … the economy … from … education?” The class explodes in discussion and debate.

I’m not one of those professors who says, “I love my students,” but…I love my students.

And as much as I complain about everything at CUNY, tonight is one of those nights when I feel truly sorry for those of you who don’t get a chance to teach here.