do no harm:


idit dobb-weinstein: "teaching is action and thinking at once. What I try to guard against most when I teach is not speaking as if my answer were conclusive, so as to avoid (to the extent possible) any kind of dogmatic appropriation. It is understandable why students might wish to imitate their teachers, but there are different modes of imitation. I try very hard to avoid the mimetic appropriation that is immediate, passive, and occludes thinking. One other reason is that if I made clear what my views were, and my views appeared as if they were final, it would preclude the possibility of first, students challenging me and second, learning from my students. The relation between the student and teacher is, to me, a dynamic relationship . . . Teaching and learning is a movement that occurs between. In other words, we are at once both agent and patient, both teacher and learner. If we are not very careful, we can do a great deal of harm. And that, too, I have learned from my teachers, Maimonides especially.

I believe my task is to provoke students to think and to engage them in genuine dialogue and questioning. To paraphrase a rabbinic saying, 'I have learned from my teachers, and I have learned from my peers, but I have learned most from my students.' And that is a continuous process of learning."

Sunday 5 September 2010

~from a letter to my marxist reading group teacher scott zeman~

i hope you don't curse at your students.  be careful they might write a blog about it if you do.  i doubt you would though.  things were more refined at vandy.  still amazed regarding idit having to sue to keep her post-----i never knew back then.  i love the internet.

the outcome of that heinous vibe in anthropology at the LA school was that i had to get a lawyer (keith fink famous for suing american apparel for sex harass) to keep from getting kicked out of class for blogging. that was a little haha funny.  and then the infinite bureaucracy is still processing it.  the least i can do is make it plain the massive levels of incompetence in many depts.  it riles me bc the school is a poor school of predominantly latina and asian kids and some russian and armenian.  so when the imperialist white male voice of authority spews a bunch of sexist rant on the girls there, they are less likely to speak out---literally linguistically and economically challenged- and culturally they might be in a place of subordination.  so it would be all the more imperative to be respectful of the civil rts laws pleading equality.

but instead the ruffians know they can get away with murder.
making fun of bulimia, insulting transvestites, cursing saying vulgar things overly sexualized to make women feel uncomfortable, and then even one law prof made fun of the rape case on campus blaming the victim.

it made them shake in their boots a little though to deal with me.

that was interesting.

naomi wolf had to wait 20 yrs to come out about school harassment at yale.  it makes me glad the future is now.
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