Not Quite Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Social Problems Class[*]

 

 

 

 

Allen Scarboro

Brandon Emert

and

Jeremy Vandergriff

 

 

 

Department of Sociology

Augusta State University

Augusta, Georgia 30904

 

Abstract

 

Not Quite Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Social Problems Class

This paper discusses a collaborative, open-ended social problems class offered in the Spring 2002 semester.  Two of the student participants on the course and the course instructor tell the story of the class, describe its structure and processes, and use students’ writings to help paint a vivid picture of the class.  The paper ends with an assessment of the class and suggestions.    

Student reaction to the course was varied, but consistently claimed: that the course asked more of them as students than courses usually do; that the structure of the course helped make the readings come alive and show their relevance for our thinking; that in their personal engagement with the materials, with the instructor and with each other, the course asked for and returned more than expected; that the course raised sometimes uncomfortable personal concerns, and that the course was well-worth the effort. 


 

 

Not Quite Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Social Problems Class

 

Introduction

This paper discusses a collaborative, open-ended social problems class offered at our university in the spring semester, 2002.  The class was unusual in several respects:

§         the characteristics of the students enrolled

§         the student-instructor interaction

§         the crafting of the syllabus with its heavy student input

§         the nature and scope of the readings for the course

§         the scope of and expectations for the writing required of the students

§         the field-trip as the focus of the course

§         the level of engagement of the students, and

§         the impact of participation in the course not only on the students’ sociological imaginations but also on their personal lives. 

 

Student reaction to the course was varied, but consistently claimed:

§         that the course asked more of them as students than courses usually do

§         that the structure of the course helped make the readings come alive and show their relevance for our thinking

§         that in their personal engagement with the materials, with the instructor and with each other, the course asked for and returned more than expected

§         that the course raised sometimes uncomfortable personal concerns, and

§         that the course was well-worth the effort. 

 

In this paper, two of the students and the instructor

§         tell the story of the class

§         describe the structure and processes of the course

§         use students’ writings to help paint a vivid picture of the class, and

§         offer an assessment of the class. 

 

We offer suggestions for adapting some of the benefits of this course for other Social Problems as well other classes here at our university and elsewhere.

 

 

Setting the Scene

Daniel and Jeremy came to Allen in the fall of 2001 asking if he could create a special Social Problems Analysis class for them for the next semester.  Both were in the Honors Program and had somehow managed to arrive at their junior year without taking the course, a core requirement for the major.  Rather than returning to take an introductory-level Social Problems, they wanted to build on their experiences in other upper-level classes, to challenge themselves, to combine knowing and action, to move beyond the classroom.  They knew that these goals were exactly ones to rope him into their scheme. 

            No problem, Allen assured them. The only limits: first, since this would be an additional course for him, he wanted the students to take primary responsibility for crafting the course, with the instructor primarily a facilitator.  This limit would also destabilize the usual power relationship in a class, shifting the students and their actions to the core of the learning.  Second, he wanted them to move beyond a reliance on texts toward activities that called for “constructed knowing” (Belenky, Clenchy, Goldberger and Tarule 2000).  Dorothy Smith, a major contemporary social theorist, argues that our discipline, sociology, has idolized a false objectivity, with the researcher standing apart from the humans being studied.  She calls, instead, for “knowing society from within,” building understanding from that location where personal experience rubs against the fabric of social institutions (1999).  From that rubbing, she argues, one may unravel those structures of society that both bind and loose us.  Keep yourselves in the center of what you seek to learn, Allen told Jeremy and Daniel.

            Daniel and Jeremy recruited Kim, an upper-level Honors student in psychology. Three other people, also navigating the bureaucratic web of the curriculum, asked to join:  Joan was a transfer student in her forties new to our university but with wide experience in the work world; Arun was entering the school late--after the regular registration period—when open courses were hard to find and he needed a core course; and Brandon, a first year student seeking to test his burgeoning sense of self-responsibility.  Not long after, Melody learned that we were having fun, and joined the hearty band of adventurers. 

The students ranged in age from 21 years old to students in their mid-40s and included a senior, three juniors, two sophomores and a first year student.  One was majoring in psychology, one in business administration, one in criminal justice and the remainder in sociology.  Three were female and four were male.  Their racial and ethnic heritages included African-American, Asian- American, and Native American, as well as Euro-American.  The students’ academic records ranged: three were in the university Honors Program, one had a very modest academic record, and the others were able students with varying records.  This mix of students may not represent the typical undergraduate range, but a variety of students were represented in the class.

            The group spent its first two weeks negotiating about a focus and a direction for the course.  Each member read.  Some of the material Allen suggested, such as Spradley and McCurdy’s book on ethnography (1972), and selected works on social stratification.  Allen also introduced Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” (1993) and Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Supposing truth is a woman—what then?” (1990) to underscore that a variety of voices and perspectives should undergird our thinking and that we should keep conclusions open and tentative. Other readings the students found themselves. 

They explored how they could work together—each cautious not to tread on another’s turf.  Ideas were tendered and as quickly withdrawn.  They argued, always careful not to hurt anyone’s feelings.  All were willing to donate to the greater good.  What a quagmire. 

            Allen urged the students towards a plan, a commitment, a direction.  The class members agreed that, among issues common to the Social Problems arena, questions of diversity and inequality struck home for each with special intensity.  Each had found herself both stigmatized and privileged, and each had felt the prick of condescension and scorn--as well as that smugness which comes from standing higher on the heap.  But how to bring their questions and commitments to bear on diversity, how to move from personal feelings to the level of the social, to what C. Wright Mills (1959) defines as the intersection of history and biography?

            During one of our meetings, Allen alluded to Peter Berger’s call for sociologists to see themselves and the roles they play as similar to the masks of Mardi Gras (1963).  No one mistakes the Mardi Gras mask for the “persons” behind the mask.  For Berger, all our roles, all our identities, have that constructed, artificial quality we see in even the best Mardi Gras mask.

            We do not remember who said it.  Allen may not even have been in the room.  But, “Mardi Gras!” someone exclaimed.  What better place to think about diversity?  So the adventure was launched.  The class would travel to New Orleans, as seekers, as observers, as sociologists, and they would bring back to our university some of the balm of Mardi Gras.  They would end the course by sharing with the wider university community some of what they learned about hearing the voices of diversity and celebrating difference.

 

Theoretical Background

Several theoretical perspectives provide the framework within which the class worked itself out.  This section discusses three specific theoretical threads, drawing from Walter Benjamin, Gisili Palsson, and current works on decentering classroom authority.

Walter Benjamin, a German Jewish social theorist hounded to his death by the Nazis, proposes that in our age of mechanization and reproduction originality becomes lost and a world void of depth is created in its absence.  Benjamin says, “To pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a perception whose ‘sense of the universal equality of things’ has increased to such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique object by means of production” (Benjamin 1969:223).   As the class slowly began to take shape it was this very mechanization and reproduction of education that we hoped to resist.  The class, from its inception, meant to celebrate an internal and permissive authority while contesting authorities that were oppressively external, obtrusive, coercive and reproductive.  We were searching for that one original piece, so to say, striving to make our mark on a system that craves right answers and rules, hoping to foster subjectivity, personal growth, and original thought—which we thought were the ostensible aims of the liberal arts.  We strove, then, not merely to be products of the educational system but to be contributors to and constructors of our learning and praxis. 

In his description of his work among Icelandic fishermen, the ethnographer Gisili Palsson argues that through collaborative learning a rich set of skills, tacit knowledge, and expertise may be produced within what he calls a community of practice (1994).  In contrast, in a system that relies on a single authority and that authority’s delegation of tasks, only a flawed reproduction of learning occurs, where that authority’s self is re-created in the learner.  However, when multiple “authorities” combine in a collaborative undertaking, where each questions and tests, revises and re-does, and challenges and supports, that is in an environment conducive to what Palsson calls enskilment­.  In enskilment, a rich and fecund knowledge is internalized and becomes the basis for action. from --is found.  Learning as production rather than reproduction, empowerment rather than discipleship.  The goal of liberal learning is achieved more surely and with richer results in a collaborative, dialectical setting.  This model of learning is also described in a powerful conversation between the pedagogical theorist Paulo Freire and the social activist Myles Horton, captured in the phrase which serves as the title of their book, We Make the Way by Walking (1990). 

Collaboration generates pride and due self-worth.  Changing the description of one’s alienated tasks that make up the whole to a more conjoined, and therefore ultimately more responsive, system drives the whole rather than compromises it.  Palsson states, “…learning is not a purely cognitive or cerebral process, a mental reflection on differences in time and space, but is rather grounded in the contexts of practice, involvement and personal engagement” (1994: 920).  As a class, we wanted to build a community of practice, to drive each other in the practice of learning and knowing, in all the complementary roles of professor-student, student-professor, or student-student. 

Paul Baker, an educational theorist, describes “Two fundamental features of a learning community.  [1] All members of the group are learners… [2] the group is organized to learn as a whole system” (1999:99).  For our class, the classroom no longer existed: we reinscribed the walls of our learning to include the whole campus, our homes and our relationships, and even the city of New Orleans.  We were obligated to take our classroom practices into the real world, that is, into the real classroom.  Palsson reminds us that,

Practice theory offers an alternative view of learning, craftsmanship and ethnography—a view that allows for the novice whose sociality is given right at the beginning.  Assuming a social or constitutive model of the individual is to introduce purpose, agency and dialogue into the process of enskilment—a radical break with the Cartesian tradition of separating ideas and the real world, learning and doing, experts and laypersons, knowledge and practice (1994:101-102). 

 

We were committed to each of us—student and instructor alike--being novices, combining ideas, work and the ‘real world’ as we constituted ourselves as learners and doers.

As members of society we live in a variety of groups, each in a constant state of flux, each requiring us to conceive of knowledge from every possible source.  Our class took on the duty of each of us to teach the others and to learn from each other alike.  To address our goal of discovering diversity we first had to learn about the definitions of diversity and its effects in real world terms and in our lives, relationships and interactions.  This was something no textbook can teach. 

So this class set out,

’In the process of learning…’ [to] shift outwards the points at which we make contact with the things we observe as objects outside ourselves… [to] ‘pour ourselves into them and assimilate them as parts of our own existence.  We accept them existentially by dwelling in them’ (Palsson 1994: 910; in the internal quotations Palsson cites Michael Polanyi).

  

As we took responsibility for our learning, we all became masters, if you will, taking a more decentered stance toward authority in the learning enterprise.  Again Palsson makes our point:

To take a decentered view of master-apprentice relations leads to an understanding that mastery resides not in the master but in the organization of the community of practice of which the master is a part (901). 

 

As a class we dedicated ourselves to the

…Six salient themes that provide some of the scaffolding for building a learning community…Communication and the Power of Dialogue…Mutuality…Mindful Engagement…Double-Loop Learning…Zone of Proximal Development…The Dialectic between Structure and Freedom (Baker 1999:101-102). 

 

Thus, as a class and a hearty band of adventurers, we created “...an ethos of connected and communal ways of learning” (Thompson 1996:322).

            We were convinced that reading primary sources, sharing our readings collaboratively, and extensive writing to learn were critical for the success of our task (see Cadwallader and Scarboro 1982; Coker and Scarboro 1990; and Scarboro, Brock and Eyrich 2001).  Further, we kept our goals open-ended, having faith in flying-by-the-seat-of-the-pants orienteering and in emergent learning.  We committed to following Ken Macrorie’s advice: student work is enhanced by having a ‘real’ audience, someone in addition to the instructor (1984).  Thus we agreed that each of us would write a paper for the course that would be publishable in the campus literary magazine.  And we were determined to have a lot of fun.

 

 

 

The Story of the Course

The first meeting of our Social Problems class was like many other classes of many other disciplines.  We eyeballed each other and noticed our awkwardness--an awkwardness that would later prove the life-blood of the course.  We were all nervous and unwilling to speak unless forced to.  We were all a bit skeptical as to how we were going to learn in a non-traditional classroom devoid of normal textbooks. 

We introduced ourselves, most for the first time, and we broke down the reason for this class coming together.  As a stipulation for the class even being created, it was the job of the students to outline the direction for the course.  We were amazed.  Wow, what a concept, actually allowing students to assist in the invention of our educational growth.  (That being said, this proved to be much more of a challenge than we first assumed.)  That basically wrapped up the activities for the first day of class. 

We met the following week with direction on our minds.  We discussed, agreed, disagreed, fought, and argued over the course we would be sailing, but this process taught each member of the group something.  We can all learn from each other as well as teach each other in forming the class of our educational gain.  Although this seemed to be the proverbial glue that bound us together, it didn’t help in providing a topic for study. 

So we rushed ourselves into a topic: “Homosexuality and the intolerance on campus and in the community for alternative lifestyles.”  We conceptualized activities and made plans to speak in various classes on campus, until a portion of the group voiced discomfort with identifying with the topic, a sort of alienated feeling.  We also worried that we would not influence our community, fearing that no one would listen to us.  So we scrapped that topic and went home with the need for a direction still weighing heavy upon the mind. 

Next class, we began to notice the diversity in the class itself, and how that diversity had itself come into the hurried decision for the original topic.  We noticed that every aspect of this class encircled diversity, yet the community or society as a whole was not tolerant of the very thing that brought us together.  We knew that we wanted to make an impact with this class, but didn’t know how.  We had now chosen a topic though, diversity, and in our discussions decided that the best way to educate our community about diversity was first to better understand it ourselves. But we were still left with the perplexing idea of addressing diversity in the classroom in an untraditional manner. 

So we had our topic; now, what to do with it.  Allen, growing increasingly agitated with our hesitance in setting a direction, left the room and said, “When I come back you better have a plan!”  In an attempt to avoid focusing the course on the current issue Brandon asked, “Is anyone going to Mardi Gras next month?” to which Jeremy responded, “Isn’t Mardi Gras a place where diversity is the norm?”   Aha! It seems we had found our direction.

Direction without navigation is seemingly impossible.  So we turned to Allen for a kick in the tail, so to speak.  He, as well as class members, suggested several classic some not so classic readings on theory.  Some helped frame our trip before we left for New Orleans; others helped make sense of the trip on our return. 

We read from Arnold van Gennep’s Rites of Passage (1960), Victor Turner’s The Ritual Process (1969), Edmund Leach’s “Of Time and False Noses” (1997), and Emile Durkheim’s “Elementary Forms of the Religious Life” (1997) to help us understand the role of rituals in creating and suspending social structure and in status changes and transformations.  Does Mardi Gras suspend Turner’s societas [the taken-for-granted day-to-day structure] and provide a place of ambiguity [communitas] where diversity can play freely and thus foster the reduction of stigma and the creation of inclusion and conversation? 

We used selections from Walter Benjamin’s Illuminations to examine “the growing proletarianization of modern man [sic] and the increasing formation of masses” (1969: 255) and the reification of status differences in the reproduced images of the Mardi Gras festival, as well as how we might recapture the aura of originary acts.  Karl Marx (1998) helped us see conflict pervading issues of diversity, gender, class and race, both in Mardi Gras and throughout our society. 

We found Clifford Geertz’s essay, “Religion as a Symbol System” (1973), useful as a model of how humans use story and action to craft meaningful systems and his “Thick Description” (1973) useful in sharpening our powers of observation and interpretation.  Joseph Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces (XX) provided a model for us as researchers, to sketch the orbit of our journey as learners as we left home on an adventure that would test us and lead us to confront monsters.

We tried to understand how Guy Debord’s notion of the spectacle helped us see how New Orleans’s Mardi Gras both reflected and undermined a society that had moved to artificiality and manipulation from a more grounded ethos (1995).  Audre Lorde (1999) showed us how, even in play, most Mardi Gras revelers carried the master’s tools and added ever-new rooms to the master’s house. 

We even took on the task of making Michel Foucault and Freidrich Nietzsche work for us, a feat usually left undisturbed for undergraduates.  Foucault (1977) helped us think through the interplay of discipline and license enacted on the streets of the French Quarter while Nietzsche (1956) pointed out the process whereby ‘slave morality’ was reinscribed alongside the apparent freedoms of Bourbon Street. 

To understand this unusual reading list, one must first understand that it was up to us, as undergraduates, to decide what was useful in these readings and to relay that to our colleagues.  What a novel idea! Undergraduates aren’t supposed to make decisions, other than choosing which path to replicate, but we did.  The collaborative means for this class also provided a safety net for failures, akin to that of a mentor/mentee relationship.    This theoretical framework provided us with the stability to make a journey not only into the bowels of our societal structures of diversity and uniformity but also deep into ourselves.

Along the way we decided that we must all journal in order to keep ourselves sane, and to provide order.  The ability to write feelings that may have an impact upon our journey as learners and knowers proved empowering and necessary.  Further, we would also regularly contribute to a class electronic bulletin board, where we would post summaries of and responses to our readings and discussion as well as selections from our journals and field notes.

Yet the expression of ideas in a discussion will not bring a group of people completely together.  In our case activity based lessons further strengthened the bond between colleagues.  About two weeks before we left for Mardi Gras, Allen and Daniel went to a local party supply store and gathered materials for “getting into the Mardi Gras mood”.  They thought of the group and what their colleagues might like to decorate themselves with.  So the final class before we left began with the opening of a brown cardboard box.  Out leapt masks and beads, glitter and glue, paint and confetti.  We made masks to wear for our drudgings through Bourbon Street.  While making the masks we were to inscribe inside our mask a word or phrase that best foreshadowed our upcoming journey.  Brandon chose the word freedom for his mask.  He said, “Freedom because I hoped I might find it at Mardi Gras.  All the stories pointed to a place of no rules, freedom at its roots.”  Others chose sayings like Kim’s “Seize the day,” and Jeremy’s “I have not yet begun to realize my potential.” 

The creation of the masks worked much like an elementary level art class.  All the class members ogled the others, each offering suggestions, trying on others suggestions, and showing mutual respect for the effort all of us exerted.  Seeing college students playing with crayons and glue sticks, paint and feather boas helped prepare us for the anti-structure of New Orleans.  The innocence involved seemed to parallel our current state of mind--unknowing, first hand, of the Mardi Gras experience. 

As we all gazed upon our creations, we seemed in unison to begin to question their use.  Discussion ensued, and we soon found ourselves discussing Erving Goffman and his theory behind masking our true selves (1959; 1986).  Goffman argues that we craft presentations that allow us to manage the tasks of everyday and of acting out lines, such as the line of being a researcher.  As we reflected on our masking to experience and understand Mardi Gras, we noted as well that masks become ways of seeking and gaining power as well as protections against the power of others.

Next in the design of our Mardi Gras experience, we rushed to secure a hotel.  Unfortunately the time spent choosing this topic for the class meant that it was going to be impossible for us to stay in the French Quarter (unless we wanted to pay an extra $200-$500 a night, and the majority of college students we know could not do that), but we didn’t mind.  It was more about the journey than worrying about the details.  So we found a place in nearby Metairie for a decent price and set up a van rental to make the ten-hour trek.

On our last day prior to leaving for Mardi Gras, the group grabbed the last of the surprises to spring from the cardboard box.  Bottles of bubble creators in hand, we left for the courtyard and ran around like school children seeing who could blow the biggest bubble, make the most bubbles at once, or keep theirs from bursting the longest.  Faculty and students alike passing us were surprised: fun being had in a college class, a break from the norms and a pause on normality.  We didn’t care what passers-by thought, nor did we mind the mess created.

Sardines packed in their mustard filled tin can have more room than we did that early Friday morning.  Bags, pillows, blankets, coolers, foods, drinks, books, music of all sorts, coffee and other such stimulants, you name it--we had it in the van.  The crowding made for some interesting seating, hmm… shall we say placements.  Our closeness, a total invasion of America’s idea of personal space, helped us overcome those awkward phases of getting to know one another which characterize most outside class behavior 

So there we were, racing in anticipation—direct course to New Orleans—Mardi Gras.  Conversation ranged from shallow to deep, asking about expectations, bragging about what we were going to do.  We sang songs together, laughed at each other, and fought over what music we would listen to, but there was still this overall sensation that something was missing (but we couldn’t tell what).  Ten CDs, two breaks for food, and numerous pit stops later we arrived, and it seemed our journey had begun.

The hotel was something out of Liberace’s worst nightmare: an airport radio tower but worse.  It was an eight-story octagon—purple, with aqua trim—definitely New Orleans, definitely Mardi Gras.  The area of Metairie that we stayed in was surrounded by yours and ours favorite--strip malls and mid-priced eating establishments.  We checked in, showered, and got ready for experience—our first of two nights in the festivities of Mardi Gras.

First things first.  What is Mardi Gras without a good liquid diet, so off to the liquor store.  Feeling justified, we were now ready (except for Joan who was resting up for a full day of parade viewing the next morning).  You can’t park in the French Quarter during Mardi Gras so we hopped a cab and bee-lined it for Bourbon Street.  Daniel split off immediately to find some friends he had in the area and Arun followed some new-made friends through the crowds.  That left Jeremy, Kim and Brandon venturing the scene together. 

Jeremy wrote about that Friday night,

The first night we went in it was mesmerizing.  I couldn’t decide where to place my gaze; every direction offered something fascinating for the eye and libido.  I’m talking about this because the feelings decayed the longer I stayed there.  Each successive hour was less enjoyable than the one preceding it…  The reproduction takes something away.

 

Brandon added,

 

I saw 60-year old women on balconies clutching hordes of beads to use as leverage in ogling the bodies of youthful males.  I saw overly intoxicated young men forcing their way through the inhibitions of others to get “caught on tape”.  I saw the scared, sometimes terrified, looks on the faces of many young women trying to escape the advances of the mass.  I saw lines of division, segregation if you will, lining every block of Bourbon Street.

 

Most of us seemed to view the scene in much the same light for the rest of our weekend, but not all. 

Arun later wrote about Saturday, the second, night in his journal:

So on this magical, blissful night, life was simple and good.  Life was going to be about having a good time, about loving and living with each other, and celebrating every damn minute of it.  Mardi Gras was a place where all was lost and forgotten, where everyone was equal, yet still a unique individual that was given the chance to shine and radiate.

 

Saturday came to a close and we were scheduled to leave the following morning. So we all got what sleep we could, packed as quickly as possible and left out for home.

On the way home, the van seemed dejected; we were all getting on each other’s nerves.  Each minute now seemed like an hour, until about three quarters of the way home.  Daniel suggested a mind game, Pay Attention, which none of us had played before.  It was one of those games where you should look at the most obvious clue, but it takes hours to find it.  This helped to loosen spirits.  The rest of the way home we sang songs together, laughed at each other, and fought over what music we would listen to. 

            We slowly pulled in to campus late at night.  After helping each other unpack the van, we began to say our good-byes and tell each other how much fun we had had.  As each person bid farewell to the next, a look was exchanged and held for an instant longer than a moment.  A look we shall never forget.  Our lives were somehow changed, and we all knew it.

Our next class meeting took an unexpected turn.  We all shared disappointment in what we saw at Mardi Gras and our initial goal of discovering diversity.  We felt that we hadn’t quite met up to our own expectations.  So we, again, turned to Allen for advice.  He told us to look to our readings for help.  He also suggested some cognitive mapping.

            We covered the board with paper, wrote Mardi Gras in the center, circled it, and branched out from there.  We, to a certain degree, were reliving every moment of Mardi Gras.  Words like separation, hate, gender, domination, loss, vanity, Jesus, expectations, and many more began providing branches to provide further limbs.  Joan, in responding to the words fear and hate wrote:

The local population of New Orleans is people from diverse cultures.  My trip to New Orleans was to explore cultural diversity that is legendary. However, in discovering its differences, I found that the word hate surfaced on several occasions.  The residents who work Mardi Gras had a love-hate attitude towards it.  Love the economics advantages that the city reaped from the constant influx of participants during the season of Mardi Gras.  Hate the invasion of all the people and their behavior.  The event of Mardi Gras can produce fear.  A fear of what is unknown.  Fear of the publicity associated with the annual event.  Fear derived from the tales of others who have been previously.  Fear of self.

 

The web led to unanticipated links.  We began to find revelations in our web that taught us about what we had first sought out to learn.  The tag of diversity is labeled with a price.  To entertain diversity, we learned, one must be tolerant of the diversities presented.  Great freedom is never possible as long as over-arching structure remains.  Anomie, like Mardi Gras, is not constant, and is also not without its own laws.  Norms are always established, even in chaos, even in anti-structure.  As one focuses upon chaos, chaos becomes the norm.  We learned to expect the unexpected, but at what cost?  We learned that when you push your limits, your limits push you.

We found connections between the class structure and the interactions of people on the street bargaining for beads.  Exchanges of the display of women’s bodies and tokens of male valuation both commodified and objectified anatomy.  Balconies displayed wealth and surveillance while the street proletarianized the mass, the crowds of revelers.  Interactions purporting to be polymorphous and ambiguous were gendered and sexualized.  Sexual acts were displayed without desire or fun: intimacy became still another spectacle for the anaestheticized throng.  The festival reinscribed the very strictures it claimed to undermine.  Not only the post-Mardi Gras “return to normalcy,” but also during the inebriated orgiastic party itself the partygoers actively lay new bricks on the walls that constrained them.

Had we learned about diversity, tolerance, responsibility, and options?  Yes.  But we learned that those characteristics which we believed to mark a humane society were not found in the turmoil of Mardi Gras, but in our lives as we returned, chastened a bit, mauled a bit by the Minotaur, to our everyday lives, lives now shadowed by the realization that building richer, freer biographies requires mindful cooperation in a community of practice.  We were Mardi Gras, we were the possibility of communitas, and we were the carriers of our own liberation.

 

Reflecting On the Course

            Now, six months after the completion of our Social Problems class, we find that our minds return to the experience again and again.  We reflect on what the student participants said about the course and their experience in it, we think of what we learned about teaching and learning from our journey, and we imagine what other teachers and students might find useful in our explorations.

            A recurring theme in our reminiscence is captured in a comment offered by Jose Calderon and Betty Farrell about a course they taught that brought students and the ‘field’ together:

A key lesson we learned from this teaching experience is that it is often more demanding but also more rewarding to practice the craft of sociology both inside and outside the classroom, alongside our students…this innovative teaching experience has brought us—as well as our students—back to the heart of the sociological enterprise, wit its roots in praxis as well as in theory (1996: 52).

 

Allen found that the course required more attention and investment than he had originally bargained for.  Creating a learning community takes time, sensitivity, imagination, and significant nurturance.  Although he prepared and delivered very few lectures, the intense class discussions and the production and revision of student writing required a constant presence.  The students found themselves reading more and reading more demanding texts than in other core courses and found that writing and revising to meet the expectations of their peers called forth more effort than one usually puts in a lower level class.

We also found that the course collapsed some of the walls that usually separate disciplinary learning and student life-experiences.  Students found that the materials we read, the experiences we shared, and the writing and thinking we undertook raised important and sensitive personal as well as social snarls.  Jeremy, for example, in a journal entry wrote, “I’m not who I appear to be.  The reflection in the mirror is not mine…. My understanding of this concealment came from my active participation in a class research project….” Melody echoes the self-examination, the investigation of biography and history, which the course fostered:  “I no longer know who I am.”  As David M. Newman remarked:

…One of the consequences of emphasizing personal social and process relevance in our courses is that it reduces the students’ tendency to see society as inevitable and external.  If we can offer then the intellectual tools to understand the dynamics of their lives—both personally and socially—then our disciplines cease to be merely ‘descriptive’ or ‘critical’ and become something useful (1999: 317).

 

The students had chosen a theme—diversity, equality and freedom—which touched issues near to their hearts.  The course moved them then to reflect on and analyze such personal concerns as the dynamics of interpersonal and marital relations, recreational drug use, sexual promiscuity, religious beliefs and norms, career choices and scholarly emphases, as well as the roles of student, learner, teacher, authority and collegiality.  The journals, the papers written for the course, and discussions in and out of class were weighty and pregnant, as well as joyful and divergent.  We were impelled then to create a safe space for exploring these connections and dynamics.  Kim described this fundamental requirement: 

I went to Mardi Gras with expectations of observing the behavior of others.  Instead, knowing that tolerance and diversity were issues we would be dealing with in New Orleans, an environment was created in the van [on the way to Mardi Gras], which provided the safety to speak our minds without fear of judgment. 

 

We were reminded of Kohl’s definition of one of the goals of learning: creative maladjustment, or “the art of not becoming what other people want you to be and learning, in difficult times, to affirm yourself while at the same time remaining caring and compassionate” (1994: xiii). The course called on us to affirm our own power and value and to act tellingly, what Calderon and Farrell call praxis or Kohl’s creative maladjustment. 

            We found that the passion ignited by the course was long lasting.  Brandon writes in his journal: “My eyes are wide, excited, no—giddy, about the future…Mardi Gras is still teaching me today.”  The trip and the course problematized the quotidian (“It’s funny—I traveled 500 miles to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, but I learned some things that I could have easily come to terms with here in Augusta”—Arun):  the going away brought new perspectives to our taken-for-granted everyday.  The theme of the Hero Journey (Campbell 1972), that one must leave home to discover home and self, but to discover them transformed, became a motif in our thinking about ourselves as learners and actors.

The students report that the course, after all a lower level course for the core curriculum, required more work than they expected but also prompted greater returns than they had anticipated.  One example of these returns was in the quality of the writing that grew from the course.  Each student wrote a paper for the course that was accepted for publication in the university literary magazine, The Phoenix.  After pre-viewing the papers and meeting with the class, the Phoenix editor re-cast the summer 2002 issue of the magazine and devoted the bulk of the publication to papers from this course.  Three student class members co-authored a paper presented at the American Sociological Association annual meetings in Chicago (Wabbersen, Vandergriff and Eyrich 2002).  The students and the instructor each report that the course more than repaid their efforts.

In the end, we found that our course resonated with what Michel Foucault describes as the “art of living counter to all fascisms.”  For Foucault the heart of fascism in not only a situation where the originary individual is subsumed in oppressive, alienating structures, but also the situation of “loving our oppressors.”  The art of counter-fascism calls on us to “prefer what is positive and multiple, difference over uniformity, flows over unities, mobile arrangements over systems, [to] believe what is productive is not sedentary but mobile.”  Foucault sums his point by reminding us that one does not have “to be sad in order to be militant…that it is the connection of desire to reality that possesses revolutionary force” (1978: 7).

So, what do we suggest to our readers?  What might they take from our experience?  First, we believe that our course expressed an attitude and a stance, both of which can be adopted in other courses, both at our university and elsewhere. 

The attitude: lighten up, do not worry over much about repeating the syllabus or learning of another, play around with your learning, trust emergent goals, feel free to try something wild on for size, be permissive and polymorphous. 

The stance: as you build a community of learners, you must listen to each other, seek voice not unananiminty, collapse walls that separate learning into well-defined sites, be humble but be bold.  This attitude and this stance require the instructor to redefine herself, decentering her authority and even her expertise in favor of being a fellow traveler with her students.  Further, the instructor must see the group rather than discrete students as the site and the vehicle and the destination of the learning.  Paul Baker reminds us that

The idea of a learning community requires a fundamental shift of mind about relationships among teachers, students, and administrators.  It rejects the long-standing assumptions of individualism that have dominated educational debate for many decades” (1999: 97). 

 

Following Baker, we stress fraternity, love for ones fellows, as a touchstone for learning.

            Did the course “cover” social problems?  Our answer is ambiguous.  No, we did not march chapter by chapter through a textbook, looking in turn at poverty and the degradation of the environment, of teen pregnancy and STDs.  No, we took no tests and reviewed no lecture outlines or reviews.  On the other hand, we learned the most important lesson of a social approach to social problems:  we, ourselves, are each and all responsible for the emergence of social problems and we each and together are responsible for those thoughtful, theory-driven struggles to build a society of sisters and brothers who live lightly and lovingly on the earth.

 

Works Cited

Baker, Paul.  1999.  “Creating Learning Communities: The Unfinished Agenda.”  Pp. 95-

109 in The Social Worlds of Higher Education: Handbook for Teaching in a New

Century, edited by Bernice A. Pescosolido and Ronald Aminzade.  Thousand

Oaks, CA: Pine Forge.

Belenky, Mary F., Blythe Clenchy, Nancy Goldberger and Jill Tarule.  2000. 10th anniv.

ed. Women’s Ways of Knowing.  New York: Basic Books.

Benjamin, Walter. 1969.  Illuminations: Essays and Reflections.  New York: Schocken.

Berger, Peter.  1963.  Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective. New York:

Doubleday.

Cadwallader, Mervyn I. and C. Allen Scarboro.  1982. “Teaching Writing within a

Sociology Course: A Case Study in Writing Across the Curriculum.”  Teaching

 Sociology 9: 359-382.

Calderon, Jose and Betty Farrell.  1996.  “Doing Sociology: Connecting the Classroom

Experience with a Multiethnic School District.”  Teaching Sociology 24: 46-53.

Campbell, Joseph. 1972. The Hero With a Thousand Faces.  Princeton, NJ:  Princeton

University Press.

Coker, Frances H. and Allen Scarboro. 1990. “Writing to Learn in Upper-Division

Sociology Courses: Two Case Studies.”  Teaching Sociology 18: 218-222.

Debord, Guy.  1995.  The Society of the Spectacle.  Trans. Donald Nicholson-

Smith.  New York: Zone Books.

 

Durkheim, Emile. 1997. “The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life.”  Pp. 27-35 in

Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach, William A.

Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt, eds.  4th ed.  Boston: Addison-Wesley.

Eble, Kenneth E.  1990.  The Aims of College Teaching.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Foucault, Michel.  1977.  Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison.  Trans. Alan

Sheridan.  New York: Random House.

_____. 1978.  “Introduction.” Pp. 1-8 in Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Religion as a Symbol System.” Pp. 87-125 in The Interpretation

Cultures:  Selected Essays.  New York: Basic Books

_____.  1973. “Thick Description.” Pp.3-30 in The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected

Essays. New York: Basic Books.

Goffman, Erving. 1959.  The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY:

Doubleday. 

______. 1986. Stigma:  Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity.  New York: Simon

and Schuster.

Horton, Myles and Paulo Freire.  1990.  We Make the Road by Walking:

Conversations on Education and Social Change.  Brenda Bell, John Gaventa, and John Peters, eds.  Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Howard, Jay R. and Lillard B. Short.  1996.  “Students’ Participation in the Mixed-Age            College Classroom.”  Teaching Sociology 24: 8-24.

Kohl, Herbert. 1994.  “I Won’t Learn from You” and Other Thoughts on Creative

Maladjustment.  New York:  New Press.

Kuh, George D.  1995.  “The Other Curriculum: Out-of-Class Experiences Associated

with Student Learning and Personal Development.”  Journal of Higher Education            66 (2): 123-155.

Leach, Edmund.  1997. “Two Essays Concerning the Symbolic Representation of Time.” 

Pp. 221-229 in Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach, William A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt, eds.  4th ed.  Boston: Addison-Wesley.

Lorde, Audre.  1999.  “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House.”

Pp. 447-449 in Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings, Charles

Lemert, ed Bolder, CO: Westview.

Macrorie, Ken.  1984.  Searching Writing: A Contextbook.  Upper Montclair, NJ:

Boynton/Cook.

Marx, Karl.  1978.  The Marx-Engels Reader.  2nd. Ed.  Robert C. Tucker, ed.  New York:

W.W. Norton

McKinney, Kathleen, David Saxe and Laura Cobb.  1998.  “Are We Really Doing All

We Can for Our Undergraduates?  Professional Socialization via Out-of-Class            Experiences.”  Teaching Sociology 26: 1-13.

Mills, C. Wright. 1959.  The Sociological Imagination.  New York: Oxford University

Press.

Newman, David M.  1999.  “Three Faces of Relevance: Connecting Disciplinary

Knowledge to the ‘Real World’.”  Pp. 309-317 in The Social Worlds of Higher            Education: Handbook for Teaching in a New Century, Bernice A. Pescosolido and

Ronald Aminzade, eds.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge.

 

Nietzsche, Friedrich.  1956.  The Birth of Tragedy and The Genealogy of Morals.  Trans.

            Francis Golffing.  New York: Random House.

_____.  1990.  “Supposing truth is a woman—what then?”  Pref. to Beyond Good and

Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future. Trans. Walter Kaufmann.  New York: Penguin. 

Ostrower, Francie.  1998.  “Nonparticipant Observation as an Introduction to Qualitative

Research.”  Teaching Sociology 26: 57-61.

Palsson, Gisli.  1994.  “Enskilment at Sea.”  Man (N.S.): 29:901-927.

Postman, Neil and Charles Weingartner.  1969.  Teaching as a Subversive Activity.  New

York: Delacorte.

Scarboro, Allen, Aaron Brock and Daniel Eyrich. 2001.  “Bringing Theory Closer to

Home.”  Presented at the American Sociological Association annual meeting.

Anaheim.

Smith, Dorothy.  1999. ”Knowing a Society from Within: A Woman’s Standpoint.” 

Pp.388-390 in Social Theory: The Multicultural and Classic Readings, Charles

Lemert, ed.  Bolder, CO: Westview.

Spradley, James P., and David McCurdy. 1972. The Cultural Experience: Ethnography in

Complex Society.  Chicago: SRA.

Stevens, Wallace.  1993.  “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.”  Pp. 50-53 in

Stevens: Poems, selected by Helen Vendler.  New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Thompson, John.  1996. “’The Between’ of Sociology: Ways of Knowing and Teaching.”

Teaching Sociology 24:321-325.

 

Turner, Victor. 1969. Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure.  Hawthorne, NY:

Aldine de Gruyter.

Van Gennep, Arnold.  1960.  The Rites of Passage.  Trans. Manika B. Vizedom and

Gabrielle L. Caffee.  Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Walzer, Susan.  2001.  “Developing Sociologists through Qualitative Study of College

Life.”  Teaching Sociology 29: 88-94.

Webbersen, Kim, Jeremy Vandergriff and Daniel Eyrich.  2002.  “The Art of Masking

and Denial.”  Presented at the American Sociological Association annual

meetings.  Chicago.


[*] We wish to acknowledge the seven students who created the class described in this paper.  Their work and reflections laid the foundation for this paper.  Thanks as well to Joyce Tucker and Sandra Avery for their helpful comments.  An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2002 Mid-South Sociological Association Annual Meetings in Memphis, Tennessee.  We appreciate the comments of the participants in the Teaching Sociology session at those meetings.