Post 221.
The failure rate in my most effective first year course was the highest in ten years. There’s something going on in our education system, before students get to UWI, which has led them to check out of an investment in their own learning. I don’t think this deterioration is slowing down.
In 2006, students were assigned four readings per week, and mostly completed them in time for class. By this year, we were down to two readings per week, and even then, by mid-semester, the majority had stopped reading both or even one in entirety.
The course explicitly includes multiple learning opportunities, levels and styles. It asks students to do their own internet research and to present what they have learned about concepts and definitions to their peers to compare what I teach with their own findings. Assignments also require students to read newspapers or scan on-line media, and to present gendered analyses of its content based on articles or images they choose. These are also presented as a basis for peer learning, and tutors both facilitate discussion and provide feedback.
In addition to encouraging self-directed on-line research, analysis of media and peer-teaching, the course also provides students with an opportunity to undertake original historical research using sources in their midst. We teach them how to logically organize a short essay, define and apply key concepts, conduct an interview, and analyze their data. And, the end of term project is a group assignment that requires them to engage others on the campus in well-researched, creative and interactive ways in order to raise awareness about an issue of their choice. For six weeks, we lead students through the process of putting together this final project which is especially good for those who are better at discussion than essay writing.
Over the years, we have provided more and more detailed guidance. This year, I gave the students as close an approximation to the exam questions as ethical, along with rubric that identified how each question should be answered, and the list of three readings that provided core parts of the answer. There were four compulsory questions and no surprises or tricks. A depressing number of students failed, not just 19 out of 40 fail, but with marks ranging from 4 to 14 out of 40. We reviewed these exams three times and were unable to salvage any extra marks on students’ behalf.
I know this is a trend. Many other lecturers, and possibly also secondary school teachers and parents, will attest to this. In my own experience in university twenty years ago, I read books. In my second year Political Science class alone, I read Plato, Bentham, Rousseau, Mill and Marx. Whole books. There is no chance that could happen here today. Learning specialists suggest using more audio-visual materials and tech tools, but reading remains fundamental, and we see the limitations of students’ inability to deal with reading material when they enter both workplaces and graduate school.
Folks like Minister Imbert and others with more opinion than understanding resort to quick explanations for such failure, which often rely on blaming lecturers. Yet, we get students whose writing skills are far below the starting point we need, who read superficially, haphazardly or not at all, and who seem not too bothered about the idea of being responsible for your own education. Against uninformed stereotypes, many of us at UWI are passionate teachers who aim for that place that encourages students to question everything, to think about their contribution to our society, and to grow intellectually and professionally, rather than being a certification mill.
My course was designed specifically to connect classroom learning to the outside world and to make sure that learning is relevant, passionate, personal and collective. Yet, increasingly, that is hard to accomplish. My high expectations of students, that they will aim to be the best in the world, that they will read what we assign and perhaps more, seem less and less shared.
As I plan for a semester of teaching that begins next week, I hope to both understand this trend and be able to better address it in the mere twelve weeks of undergraduate life that lie ahead.
Post 220.
There are many reasons why people don’t understand what sexual harassment looks like. First is widespread confusion about the difference between seduction and coercion, the old ‘she’s saying no but she really likes it’ interpretation.
Second is that we live in a world where women’s consent to men’s sexual advances is less important than men’s freedom to make those advances when, where and how they choose. Women all over the world, en masse, can attest to repeated, unwanted sexual advances they have experienced, from strangers on the street to those they know. In the end, shame and responsibility isn’t shouldered by those who roughshod over the boundary of respect, but by many women who then check themselves in an attempt to prevent it from happening again.
Third, the workplace, like most of the public sphere remains a masculine one where women may be talked to and about in sexualized ways even when their work has nothing to do with their vagina. It’s dehumanizing, meaning it reduces humans, in this case women, to their sexual value. It’s unprofessional, meaning it trivializes their status and identity as workers while they are on the job. This happens across the Caribbean, from Jamaica to St. Vincent to Trinidad to Guyana, and it is especially true in traditionally masculine fields such as politics, sports and the military.
Once, I was leading a research team collecting data on election campaigning. One minister, who barely knew me, walked up from behind and slid his hand into mine as I stood on the street with party activists who were canvassing the constituency. ‘I missed you, where have you been?’ he declared loudly, rubbing my hand in both of his own. In that second, I had many decisions to make, in front of everyone watching to see how I’d react. I pulled my hand back and said, ‘I don’t know what you are talking about’ and discreetly stepped away, but I was blue vex that I was put in that position of having to refuse and be polite. I didn’t care that this Minister was a powerful player and I didn’t need to cater to his ego to get ahead, having already earned three more degrees than he had. I was there as an experienced professional to do a job, not as some sexy female groupie.
Chris Gayle’s attacking shot to sports journalist Mel McLaughlin provides a similar example of sexual harassment. Both Gayle and McLaughlin were at work, on the cricket field. She clearly didn’t expect or appreciate being publicly hit on, then told, ‘Don’t blush, baby’, in front of the entire cricketing world. ‘I’m not blushing’, she clarified; a professional had to remind another professional that she was actually a professional, and that they were having a professional – not after work jokes – encounter in full view of millions.
Indeed, one commentator described the moment as Chris Gayle taking ‘shots on and off the field’, like McLaughlin was inviting a hit mid-wicket. Another described him as ‘amorous’ while she ‘scurries off with bright red cheeks’, embarrassed. And the comments ended with the view that “Mel is a strong and independent woman and might have enjoyed it’, but that this wasn’t what was needed on the cricket field. Only she didn’t look as if she enjoyed it. Though McLaughlin was reported to have told her boss she was uncomfortable, Gayle felt it was his right to decide that ‘no harm was done’. All this signals sexual harassment unrecognized.
Gayle was unapologetically apologetic, missing an opening to score as a regional icon by acknowledging his step out of crease. He lost an opportunity to send a message to Caribbean boys following his stardom that big men have a role in stopping sexual harassment, even as they come to understand it better, sometimes in difficult ways. He dropped the ball when he could have shown an example of ideal manhood as more than hyper-sexuality, as also self-reflection and responsibility. No surprise, this is a sportsman who posts, “If u don’t have a strip club at home, U ain’t a cricket ‘Player’”.
West Indians need to recognize sexual harassment when it exists. And, Gayle needs to know that predation and professionalism don’t mix.
For some other commentaries see:
http://www.amilcarsanatan.com/letter-to-chris-gayle/
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/commentary/20160106/editorial-churlish-chris-gayle-and-sexual-harassment#.Vo0MQ3GX9Cd.twitter
https://globalvoices.org/2016/01/07/could-cricketer-chris-gayles-gaffe-inspire-caribbean-men-to-man-up-and-know-how-to-behave/
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