What can I say?

Sharon Howard notes apropos of nothing in particular Golden Rule number one is that you don’t criticise your colleagues on your weblog. This is interesting because it also got me thinking about how you write about students.

Vertigo from the Observatory Tower at Lincoln Castle.

As an example the first year group we took round Lincoln yesterday were a bit quiet, but they seemed very pleasant and were asking intelligent questions. But suppose they’d been surly, grouchy and pretty much an embarrassment. I’ve never had a group like that at Leicester, so if I did have one I’d be interested to know how you engage their enthusiasm. Should I write about it? My pragmatic side says that it’s highly unlikely that they would read the entry, so they’d probably never find out and no harm is done. However I think that’s simplistic, because if I did bring up examples it’s not really ethical. It would also tar the good students in the year with the low-grade grouching I’d be doing. Ok, but what about saying this is a good year. If the comments disappear next year, then is that criticism by silence? If it is then it gets difficult to say anything about specific teaching problems. I think this may simply be an area that cannot be discussed publicly. Students signed up to learn Ancient History, not to be put under a spotlight.

I did wonder if I could talk how you deal with eccentric problems, like a student in another place who had a real attitude problem with female seminar leaders*. Again I think that even if I kept their anonymity, students could read this and work out who I’m talking about. Yet bizarre problems would be the sort of thing that I, and many other post-grads, would have no experience of. Again I don’t think I can talk about current students, even if I phrase it as “consider a hypothetical student…”

So when I do talk about teaching problems they’ll probably be generic like, “How do you get new students to forget about peer-pressure in seminars and start talking about their opinions” or else problems that friends from other universities have thrown over to me.

I think talking about teaching could help me become a better teacher, but it can’t be done at the cost of current students. Which is a shame, as I have a hilarious tale about the student who… ach! My lips are sealed. —–