Dr. Crazy and the Feminist Classroom

This actually began as a response on Dr. Crazy's post about a feminist classroom. Her post was rather timely because I have, in my role as Women's Studies Coordinator, just started a reading group focusing on feminist pedagogy and our first meeting was last Friday.

Now, understand, I know nothing about feminist pedagogy. The fact that I'm even using the term "pedagogy" is a new development of the past few years since we didn't really go in for that stuff at my graduate school (unethical bordering on criminal behavior, sure; but pedagogy and theory, not so much). Nor was it something that people at other places where I taught talked about. I'll also confess a little resistance on my part, too, due to my habit of shutting down when overstressed.

I digress.

The first reading that I chose was really from the only book I knew on the subject, which is about a decade old and which was on my shelf, Jyl Lynn Felman's Never a Dull Moment: Teaching and the Art of Performance. She came to speak at the school where I taught back when the book came out and I found her fresh and exciting (you know, not having been exposed to anything quite like her style). Also, going back through the book, I find that I was probably also attracted to the way she talks about teaching as a form of role play, of acting. This is something to which I can relate since I talk of playing the character of Prof. Bluestocking, which apparently is not something that everyone understands.

You see, not everyone in the group found her ideas quite so fascinating. Some even found her repellant for a variety of reasons, and the main criticism of her that bothered me (probably because they describe my own teaching style) had to do with the way that she presents herself as charismatic and authoritative in the classroom. Most of the teachers in the group found this to be wrong and non-feminist. She had too much of a dramatic presence in her classroom and she spoke more than the students, which they felt took away from the learning experience of the students.* One person in the group even seemed to think of this as damaging the learning experience of the students, and cited another professor who had led a talk and discussion a few weeks earlier as being too flamboyant and intrusive in that discussion.

I didn't have a problem with Felman's style of presentation, nor with the other professor's style. Call me a passive learner, but teachers in that style always engaged me. Call me egotistical, but that style also tends to be the way that I teach: a combination of lecture and discussion that varies depending upon the size of the class, the personalities in the class, how far we are in the semester, the weather, the subject matter of the day, and so forth. Sometimes, I need to talk more than the students do. Sometimes they need to talk more (about the subject) than I do as they try to put the pieces together. As I once wrote to Prof. Zero, it's like a live performance of music.

Nonetheless, as in any jazz combo, everyone can have their improvisational solo, but someone is the band leader. As I told the group, "I am the expert, they are not." Meaning that the students pay me to know this subject well and to share the the most current research on the subject with them, then they ask questions in order to understand the subject, and expect me to draw on my expertise to answer those questions that will help them understand the subject. This is might not be appropriate for an introductory writing class. It might not be appropriate for a literature class; but it seems to work for my history classes, as does my exuberant Prof. Bluestocking character.

I felt as if my claim to authority over my subject (not to mention personality) was considered not particularly feminist, at least not in the classroom, and that, in the classroom, such a claim was patriarchal. Yet, saying that I'm a patriarch and a non-feminist teacher, well, that's just didn't seem right either. Could a classroom that includes and authoritative teacher and contains lecture also be a feminist classroom?

So, I began to wonder if perhaps their commitment to their style of feminist pedagogy had more to do with the subjects that they teach, which are predominantly the introductory writing classes. Those classes deemphasize content and emphasize skill. Students really do have to do something to learn anything. They peer review and do group work and discuss from start to finish.

My classes, especially at the introductory level, emphasize content. All of our outcomes are content based (which has it's own set of problems, but that is another story for another time). Might that affect how I teach? Might also the level of the students determine the extent to which I could employ their techniques -- particularly given that they have more to say as the semester progresses and they have a greater base of knowledge from which to draw? I began to wonder how the conversation might have changed had we had people who teach social sciences, or nursing, or hard sciences, or math -- and in the sciences and nursing fields, the comparison between the sections designated lecture and the labs or clinical sections. The commenters Paperkingdom brings this up in Dr. Crazy's comments -- as does Anonymous.

Dr. Crazy's portrayal of a feminist classroom that is based just as much on principles of gender inclusion in the subject matter, respect of the students, allowing all to participate, and modeling feminist behavior -- "lived feminism" -- went quite a bit toward helping me to articulate what about my classrooms are, in fact feminist. Historiann chimed in, too, with the reminder that claiming authority over a subject that we have spent our adult lives studying is also inherently a feminist behavior.

That last one about authority in the classroom was the one that most confused me after the reading discussion last week. I fear that my own defense mechanisms may have come into play, but I did get the sense that to claim authority, and therefore become an authoritative presence in my classroom, was not in the spirit of feminist pedagogy. If that is the case, then I am in a very awkward position for over half of my classes.

One of the main courses I teach is African American history. Generally, I am the only white person in the class. When I walk in the door on the first day, you can feel the ripple of suspicion as 30 individual guards go up across the room. How could I, a white lady, possibly know anything about a subject? In the experience of my students, most people of my color don't consider black history to be important, and now here is a white lady presuming to teach it! I have to address that the second I open my mouth. "Yes," I say, "I am white," and then tell them about why I am interested in this subject and find it one of the most important things to study. Then, I have to establish my knowledge of the subject matter to maintain any level of credibility, trust, or respect. I also cannot be "invisible" because that would be unbelievably dishonest in a class about race in which the people in the position of less power are of color and the person in charge is white.

In the introductory to Women's Studies course, there is always that one D00d who takes the course more to work out (or display) his hostility toward women than to learn, and who therefore challenges the professor on every turn (got one now -- another story for another post). You have to claim your authority there, too, as Dr. Crazy writes, to stand up to that masculine challenge of anything that places women at the center.

In that class, what I realized that I'm teaching the students -- and what I emphasize in order to disarm their knee-jerk, antifeminist alarms** -- has less to do with women and more to do with the ways that systems of power work, where people fit within those systems of power and how they negotiate those systems of power.*** To ignore that the systems of power exist is to be, at best, naive, or, more often, downright dangerous.

To me (I realize as I write, so haven't clearly thought through yet), a feminsit teacher should recognize the system of power that is the classroom. That system of power will not disappear. The way the power is distributed and wielded -- the negotiation of the system of power in a way that is not abusive but facilitates not only an understanding of the subject but also perhaps and awareness of the other systems of power present in the room and certainly within the subject at hand -- that is where the feminism begins.

By the way, we are reading Chapter 1 of Paulo Friere's Pedagogy of the Oppressed for next month. If anyone has any suggestions, you'll be a lifesaver!

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*Some of this may also be her own account of herself, and her effort to deemphasize the students' experience because she did not want to violate their privacy or speak for them.
**You know, the ones that shriek "manhater manhater manhater!"
***This has actually been somewhat helpful in de-fusing the types of conversations that devolve into "but men get sexually harassed, too" and "but women can behave badly as men."