This will be brief. (Never mind it's not brief...)
I've got an instructor who is using the term "projection" to describe what he anticipates some students will do in his class.
This is an "English" class.
I am trying to grasp what is going on in the class but find it hard. I took many English courses and they were very much about the text and what the reader brings or projects into the text. No one reads a book and gets the exact meaning out of it because it is a soft science and very subjective. I don't know what course you are taking. If it is English 100 and a survey course then it is different than an English course that studies DH Lawrence. English studies incorporated many ideas from psychology ie Freud, Jung , many others. Because it often involves ones personal development and depth of understanding to analyze character, plot, themes in books that deal with god only knows what. I mean Dostoyevsky tackles, patricide, incest, suicide, marital infidelity etc.
You write in a language I barely understand because it seems so analytical and political. If you could give examples of what is so insulting and say it in a simpler and more direct way, it would go a long way in helping me understand your distress.
The class appears to be using a form of racial profiling which is a Civil Rights violation. I'm not a lawyer but the structure of this class already appears to be highly problematic. The instructor has also made the class highly personalized, highly racialized and he has made a point of "outing" people based on their race.
Could you give one example of this$ It is very, very political sounding
So I am not trying to make a political statement here although this ends up falling within the realm of politics.
I have many concerns already.
One of my concerns though is an instructor who is using what sounds like psychobabble to describe the "consciousness" of his students.
It's only the first week of class. The only interaction I have had with him so far is that I asked him if he can point me in the direction of any grading rubrics and he has none AND he provided me with quite a snarky answer.
Ok that was a bit of a snarky request. What on earth is a grading rubric? If this was your first contact with him, he is probably pretty tired of students who care only about grading. English is a soft science and he probably couldn't nail down how he will grade. Did you mean what will get you a high mark? Like class participation, essays, multiple choice?
I'm not sure what my point with this post is going to be. I think it's just a question of opinion about how to politely stand up against an authority figure who is using psychobabble.
I find it distressing that the course should not be a group therapy class and it's not a psychology class and he is using terms that sound like pseudo-psychology. Terms being used by someone in a Federally funded academic setting, someone who isn't qualified to do an unsolicited psychological assessment of students.
You are very free with condemning him for using psychobabble. I think you are probably in the wrong class. Usually, English majors love to jump into deep waters psychologically and they is plenty of cross information between psychology and English. Quite often one is required to keep a personal journal of their journey through the themes in the course ie. love, anger, jealousy etc. Some people love this. I don' t think this is your cup of tea.
Often I just need to write things out for my own clarity and that is what I have done above.
I have already reported to the compliance and civil rights office at my institution that I have some concerns about how the class is structured.
Wow, you are really demanding something from this course but I don't know what it is you want. You are so consumed with attacking this prof. Ok he is an eccentric nincompook. There are lots of them teaching in universities. You desire to change this prof and get him to conform to your political beliefs is pretty self destructive. You can't change the whole screwed up system. It is patriarchical.
It very much seems to me that he is performing some kind of conversion political activism in this class. We shall see how it turns out. In the mean time I'm trying to keep my sanity and dignity. In this class it looks to me like the instructor is grading students based on their psychological disposition according to their race. I find that the structure of the class is heavy handed and domineering.
Ok that is a very sweeping statement Conversion? Again just how is he trying to accomplish this?
I'm trying to set aside my opinion about politics etc. and break down the verbiage he is using and the structure/power dynamics.
He is definitely using language that appears unusual to you. The political language you are using is nearly incomprehensible to me. I feel uncomfortable with it and feel you are more interested in demonstrating your facility with some kind of jargon, than in showing how you feel and how you were hurt
Any thoughts on authority figures using psychobabble to justify their actions... I would appreciate it.
There is also the concept of free speech which the instructor has versus an instructor abusing their authority...
In the end I may base all of my work in the class on MLK research, the class doesn't even reference MLK at all, so I may rely on the civil rights movement background to generate my content for this class and then I will just see how he grades the civil rights based content....which will be quite odd since he is already violating students rights I think he will have an issue with with MLK ultimately. Sigh the crapola of it all. I have a clear goal and that is for me to graduate and to do it with some kind of dignity and sanity intact. I also do not want to feel voiceless or like this instructor is grading my race or my psychology.
How is he grading your race?? Lecturers are so often autocrats and condescending. If you want all that to change and it bothers you to distraction, you are up against a huge structure that you can throw rocks at but you will suffer for that.
I don't think it's an instructors role to attack a student's identity or sense of self. He doesn't need to do this to teach people concepts or skills.
I may come back to this post to yammer on about this. You may have noticed I have a way of self-talking/writing through issues here. Sometimes when I feel anxious or upset or overwhelmed I do have a difficult time finding the right words and articulating EVERYTHING that is in my thoughts, so I guess to a certain degree I see this as a safe place to try and sort out my own sense of voicelessness. I don't feel voiceless necessarily in this class yet but I do feel inclined to question and even confront his authority and that I am sure he may deem as "inappropriate."
A compulsion wells up in me to upset the power dynamic and point out inside the classroom discussion that an instructor/student setting presents a type of power dynamic that is not a balanced context to start with. I also want to publicly post in the class that if anybody feels they are being racially profiled or coerced into making personal statements or judged in ways they are not comfortable with they should report it to the civil rights office and also the head of the department. Somehow this action seems confrontational. Then again there is nothing written in stone that I must be powerless or voiceless and I am not violating anybody's rights by promoting the use of the campus civil rights office.
I can imagine that makes you very popular with your prof. You are undermining his authority and presenting yourself as very subversive, to the point where you are emailing students to take a stand with you.
I am sure you are extremely intelligent and wanting to be on the side of justice and change. Aggressive tactics may be your strategy of choice but I can't agree with you on that.
I really thought about your situation and realize that you are demanding change and going pretty overboard to get it. There are less radical ways of communicating, many of them developed by the psychobabbles you seem to scorn. This probably isn't what you want to hear but it could be the beginning of a productive, compassionate, enlightening discussion. Please don't turn me into the brain police for having an opinion that you don't share
Any thoughts are welcome if you are so inclined to share.
