Scattered Musings

• Speaking as someone "on the ground," as it were, I found myself vaguely bemused by this tumblr quarrel.  As an example of "Christian privilege," "[y]ou don’t have to be familiar with another faith’s scripture in order to 'get' the allusions and references in the literature taught in high school English classes" sounds good, I suppose, were it not that one's Christian students (even at the college level) are very likely incapable of recognizing most allusions to the N.T. Aside from a very tiny minority, most of my Christian students have the same grasp of N.T. narratives/concepts/quotations as do my non-practicing and non-Christian students--that is, they know what's accessible via popular media.  (I've yet to have a student who couldn't recognize a Christ allegory at twenty paces.)   And they are also unlikely to recognize anything beyond the basics, if that, in terms of liturgy (in whatever denomination), iconography, etc.   From shop talk I've heard over the years, this is as much an issue at Christian colleges, whether Catholic or Protestant, as it is at secular institutions.  In other words, the instructor has to go into the room assuming that the Scriptural references will be "unfamiliar" to everybody; it's why I have the "you know, if you're an English major, you're going to have to read the Bible [insert discussion of different relevant translations here]" lecture in my regular repertoire, right alongside "seriously, there's no escaping Paradise Lost," "you'll have to reconcile yourself to reading Shakespeare," and "yup, get yourself a copy of The Pilgrim's Progress."
• Which is another way of saying that there's no necessary contradiction between emerging from a culture and being, in many ways, foreign to it.  It's why I argued many years ago that one of the common objections to such-and-such "studies" programs--the argument from narcissism--didn't make much sense. 
• I did this kind of assignment once as an option (which few students took), and haven't repeated it, in large part because I'm dubious about the ethics of siccing random students on Wikipedia.  Granted, the results might not be any worse than the current Victorian literature page, but still.  I think asking students to investigate and write about Wikipedia is valuable,  but having them mess about with the site unsupervised is problematic (shouldn't students be comfortable citing sources before they contribute to a site which demands citations at the drop of a hat?).
• I don't usually have to "guess" if my students have done the reading or not.  It's apparent within the first five seconds of asking a question.  Even in an online setting, surely dead air on the discussion boards would make this clear? More to the point: college students are usually adults.  It's up to them if they want to do the reading, because that's the freedom of choice (and the choice of consequences) that goes along with being an adult.  At a certain point, students have to motivate themselves to do the work, just as they may have to actively decide to be interested in a subject that doesn't grab them from the get-go.  (And as the article goes on to point out, the system can be fiddled with mind-blowing ease.)
• On a lighter note, I've been experimenting with this new iPad keyboard case (which I managed to snag at half price on Amazon).  So far, pretty good: the keys are comfortably spaced; the feel is comparable to a decent netbook; and the construction is solid.  The only thing I dislike right now is that some of the common punctuation marks are controlled by function keys (perhaps this is designed to drive the semi-colon to extinction?). 

Comments

[Anastasia]

Yes. They have no idea. I am in a Christian school and most of my students have been in christian school since kinder. They probably have better than average bible knowledge. They tend to think allusions (on the few occasions where they actually get them) are accidental for some reason. It's strange. But it really doesn't help them very much to be Christian. In addition to that, they are Protestants of an evangelical variety, so there's an awful lot they just flat don't know that would be terribly important to medieval and early modern people.

[nicoleandmaggie]

Semi-colons, I love you! Don't ever change!

[JaneC]

And then there are the days when the students look at you blankly because of both the liturgical and the literary references. Last week I told a couple of my music students about the origin of Quasimodo's name. I thought they would remember the chant "Quasi modo infantes" from the previous Sunday (they are in the choir for the local Latin Mass). They didn't remember the chant, and they also didn't know who Quasimodo is.