Reading Log #3 - Part 2

Reading Log, Nathan, Chap. 5
Summary:
The chapter begins with a description of an activity that Nathan regularly employs in her Anthropology classroom. She tells the students that a witch is responsible for the way the class is going, etc, then has the students each identify three candidates from among their classroom that might be the witch. She then discusses the outcome - which is nearly always the same. The students routinely choose the most engaged, prepared, and vocal from among their classmates. Nathan then uses this to focus the students' attention on matters of difference and expectation culturally.

Sections on patterns of speech in the classroom and the dorm highlight the disconnect between academic expectation and reality. In class, professors desire questions and discussion that engage the material, while students ask questions and participate in discussion in ways that secure necessary information or do not reveal to others a level of engagement that would mark them as different from the norm. Conversations before and after classes also showed that students were unwilling or uninterested in participating in academically focused dialog.

Nathan's observations of conversations within the dorms confirmed that, despite their claims to the contrary, students spent less than 5% of their time discussing material presented in class or incorporating classroom discussions into their outside interactions with one another.In essence, the desire of academe - to form persons who engage with intellectual matter on a level that pervades (and hopefully changes) their lives does occur within the students' time at university. Instead, the "real" culture of the undergrad world remains highly personal and relationship driven. In Nathan's words, "Academic and intellectual pursuits thus had a curiously distant relation to college life."

A mini-study of the reasons that students remain in college revealed that students see life in college as a major reason to be there. This confirmed the students' assertions that most of their learning at AnyU took place outside the classroom. Nathan's conclusion is that college culture, rather than academics, is often the most compelling part of the university experience. This finding was confirmed when Nathan attended a course recommended as the "perfect class." The sexuality class modeled what students required in their daily lives: equality, informality, fun, irreverence, and a separation from the more formal aspects of learning.

Reflection:

Throughout my reading of MFY I have sensed an "otherness" about Nathan that I suspect she does not recognize in herself but that is quite apparent to her fellow students at AnyU. Having read this chapter I can now put a name to that difference. Nathan is the witch! She is in many ways the epitome of that student her Anthropology classes have determined to be outside the norm because they are more engaged and prepared, less invisible. Though she talks about taking pains not to stand out in class, she does so in other arenas -through her physical attributes, and in the dorms through attendance at meetings and activities - what I call her "joinerism." These behaviors have made her the witch in the situation at AnyU.

It is so interesting to me that Nathan seems to have failed to see this in most cases and finds other reasons for her fellow students' behaviors. I do realize that she has taken great care to observe, interview, and understand the AnyU situation from many angles. Her book is fascinating on several levels. I just get a kick out of seeing her blind spots. :) I also wonder how often I am guilty of the same kind of self-ignorance!

I think this chapter, more than any so far, points out to me the basic disconnect between what the university desires for the student and the desires of the student him or her self. Professors and administrators, especially in a Christian setting, see their job as student formation. We are to impart a sense of intellectual seeking and an openness to learning. But students see the job of the university very differently. The class on sexuality demonstrates a way in which we can mesh the needs of the student with the ideals of the university. Not through showing prurient movies, but through ways of interacting with students that meet them at their point of interest.