Thursday, October 26, 2023

Hooked On Literature - Part 1

 Several years after retiring, I received a panic-stricken call from my former department. There was no specialist available to teach the upper-level seventeenth-century literature course, indispensable for the honours program in French literature at Brock University. Would I come to the rescue? Feeling loyalty to my colleagues and being a glutton for punishment as well, I agreed. Within five minutes after entering the classroom I could sense that something was wrong.


Although a dozen or so of the thirty-odd students making up the group seemed very attentive and eager to learn, the majority were children of the digital age. Or, to put it less charitably, their attention span appeared rather limited. They viewed their professor and his lecture the same way they would a television show. If it didn’t catch their attention within the first few seconds, they would zap it. And this is what they proceeded to do with me. Since they couldn’t literally turn me off, they began talking with their fellow-students.


Armed with a more than forty-years experience as a teacher, I knew I had to do something very dramatic right then and there, otherwise I would lose them for the rest of the session. I stopped dead in the middle of a sentence—or was it in the middle of a syllable—and, addressing them in a cool, imperious tone of voice, said, “O.K., you guys, let’s get a few things straight right at the outset. I’m not a lowly part-time lecturer or tenure-track assistant professor. I don’t have to suck up to you to get good evaluations. I couldn’t care less whether you love or hate me. As Professor Emeritus, I’m at the top of the heap. Nothing you say, think or do will make the slightest difference to my career. The only thing that interests me is proving to you that these great French writers who lived over three hundred years ago are capable of speaking to you more eloquently about your hang-ups, your fears, your hopes, your aspirations and your dreams than just about any rock stars or rappers who live far closer to you in time and space. I don’t believe in democracy in the classroom and I’m not going to change. You will have to change if you want to remain here. I will not tolerate overgrown bedwetters in my classroom.”


There was a moment of utter stupor. The class was obviously not used to being addressed so bluntly...

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