I suppose the pump was already being primed. I’ve been writing and administering and grading exams this week, and a couple of days ago I read this post at Blographia Literaria about the various kinds of regret caused by reading. (A good post it is, too.) Maybe it was also the generally good group of students I’ve had this semester in my classes, British Literature I (survey to 1660) and British Novel I (upper-division, to 1837). But I’ve been feeling especially melancholy at the end of this semester.
Writing an exam always forces me to reexamine the books I’ve taught. Not only do I always make some connections that I hadn’t made before–that macro-view of the book can be illuminating–but I always regret something about the way I’ve handled the class. I find myself wishing I’d made things more explicit, or asked a better question, or led the discussion this way rather than that. I always end up writing imperious little notes to myself while I’m writing an exam: “Do this next time! Don’t forget this!” Perhaps we can steal a trick from Kant and call that the pedagogical imperative: the dream of pedagogical perfection that persists even when my post- (or pre-?) Enlightenment ontology of teaching resists those kinds of teleological absolutes. The counterpoint to exam writing can seem like syllabus writing, when my thoughts are more absorbed by the subject matter. Writing an exam concentrates my thoughts on the human subjects that are going to be taking it, which is what leads me to reflect on my shortcomings. I don’t think I’ve ever finished a day in class, a book, a semester, without wishing I had just a little more time, the chance to say one more thing–quite literally, I nearly always run a minute or two past the end of the class.
But the real counterpoint to the melancholy of exam writing is the felix interlocutor: the student who takes all these incomplete materials and makes them into something better than what was (and was not) said in class. It’s a bracing counterpoint to the melancholy of exam writing to read something that makes one say: “That’s good! And I didn’t teach it. That’s real thinking going on there.” Socrates called this being a midwife to other people’s ideas, and it’s pretty satisfying without being at all ego-driven. Maybe that’s why it’s one of the best things about teaching. It’s certainly better than writing a syllabus.
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December 18, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Dave Mazella
Hi Chris, as far as I’m concerned, the entire purpose of teaching is to see whether students are able to discover or articulate things I could never have imagined myself. That’s much more satisfying than gauging how well they can rehearse my tired-ass arguments. Even if they do that kind of mimicry in a convincing way, it doesn’t feel like an accomplishment, at least to me. So yes, surprises are what I look for, at least after 10 or 15 years of teaching.
DM
December 18, 2008 at 10:18 pm
undine
This is exactly what I hope to see in exams–a whole greater than the sum of the parts. I have “don’t forget this” problem, too.
December 19, 2008 at 10:10 am
Christopher Vilmar
To both Dave and undine–
Tired-ass is a perfect descriptor of my take on most things, especially when you consider how much I manage to forget during the walk from my office to the classroom.
December 26, 2008 at 11:57 am
wasted opportunities? « The Long Eighteenth
[…] Chris Vilmar’s new 18c blog, Perplexed by Narrow Passages, has a good end-of-term piece on the melancholy of grading. Somehow, our students’ very visible failures, their failures […]
February 10, 2009 at 2:40 am
The Salt-Box » Teaching Carnival 3.1
[…] Exams fill Chris Vilmar–and not just his students–with regret. […]