In his famous essay “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” Louis Althusser argues that the role of education is not only to impart skills, but also to ensure the continued submission of future-laborers to the ruling ideology of the day. One would be hard pressed to argue with him in an age in which the university education is shaped by the logics of capitalism in an increasingly explicit way, such that the university degree is itself approached by many as a commodity to be purchased. As a university instructor of writing, literature, and culture, I take it as my most basic mission to disabuse students of the idea that they should submit to their education. I attempt to help students to recognize and critically interrogate the competing ideologies of our own moment, as well as those of the past. In this commitment I feel that I am part of a rich and diverse community of educators. In the context of my own teaching, this general philosophical stance correlates to many specific practices.
One key way in which I teach active critical thought is by showing students how to read closely. When I model close reading in the classroom, I attempt to disjoin it from past associations students may have, in order to show that it is not meant to unveil secret meanings that lurk like buried treasure in the text, so much as it is a practice of taking time to seriously account for the importance of semiotic choices. Close reading is not a skill that is much rewarded in our daily lives—we must search mainly for upshots to successfully navigate an information saturated world—and so I strive to carve out ample time within the race through the syllabus to circle the desks as a class around a paragraph, image, film scene or internet site, and to take the time to see how it works to create meaning within a historical context.
Naturally, the practice of close reading as a group links closely to my teaching of writing, in which I work with students to teach them to read their own writing closely, and to likewise treat that reading and revising process as one of critical exploration. One of the most important things one can do in teaching writing it to get students talking about and explaining their own language choices to each other, to me, and to the class as a whole. I accomplish this in different ways, depending upon the material at hand and the personality of the class. I have had some classes who thrive in small groups, and others who work better having frequent private conferences with me. In crafting writing assignments, I create smaller writing assignments that build toward larger ones. Students appreciate this approach, not only because the stress of writing is mitigated by spreading it out, but also because they have time to develop and revise thoughts; ideally, the process of writing begins to feel like one of discovery, rather than one of trying to present polished conclusions on a text they have only just begun to know.
Another important practice for me is crafting courses whose content challenges, rather than reinscribes, the way information is traditionally organized. In the context of a literature course, this can mean many different things, such as including non-canonical authors, multi-disciplinary materials or methodologies, or transnational perspectives. In the contexts of survey courses where such flexibility may not exist, my emphasis on historicizing texts and putting them into conversation with theoretical supplements brings oft-studied texts into fresh perspectives.
It is the nature of the genre of “teaching philosophy” to make an instructor want to describe an innovative Theory of Teaching that is brought into the classroom like a carefully carved tablet tucked under one arm. I make no such pretension here. Rather, the above represents an entry into my take on some of the most important principles and practices that animate my work as a teacher. These ideas work differently inside every classroom I enter, and part of the pleasure of teaching is figuring out how each class differs from the one before. From what my students have told me, the quality in my teaching that they most appreciate is my ability to see things from their point of view, and to explain things in a way that makes sense to them. Ultimately, my most important work as a teacher is to capitalize on that natural ability to connect with students, so that that my enthusiasm for critical engagement with the world seems interesting and vital to them, rather than itself becoming an ideology to which to submit.