Rambling about Requirements

I haven't written in a while because I've been preoccupied with the end of the summer session and the grading that entails. Now that all the madness has ended and I have finished teaching my first solo course, it's time to take stock of events.

On the first day of class, all twenty-five of my students raised their hands when I asked them if they were taking my course to satisfy a requirement. I'd expected this. Academia is a business, and courses must be marketed and sold to a paying public (the students). Why else did I make promotional posters for my class?

Of course, it's not that simple. Students have to meet requirements, and sometimes there are precious few options for meeting these requirements. So a collection of scientists, sociologists, psychologists, athletes, and classics majors found themselves studying opera, when maybe they would rather have studied painting or design or poetry. Only four or five had ever seen an opera before, and most were not able to tell me what opera was on the first day. By the last day of class, they had certainly learned something.

Still, some people were texting or surfing the web during class; others stared vacantly into space. I found myself wondering what life would be like if there were no requirements. Perhaps all my students would be equally excited about the material? After all, the students don't have much particular say in what their requirements are: the requirements represent the university's idea of things all students should know something about. The administration is big brother, and even your education is not entirely in your hands.

There is a counterargument. The students knew what they were getting into when they joined this university, and if they didn't like the university's set of requirements, they could have gone somewhere else. So they have agreed to these conditions of their education, and the university is not big brother after all.

On the other hand, if we didn't have a requirement system, would I even get to teach a course on opera? Courses stand or fall by the number of students enrolled in them, which makes it profitable (or not) for the university to offer them. Without requirements, courses would fill only if they matched student interests quite closely. There might not be any particular demand for an opera course; opera's not exactly a popular form of American culture. Miley Cyrus is.

Perhaps, too, this entire discussion is an example of self-delusion. Perhaps students were apathetic simply because this was my first class? Surely my teaching technique could improve. Thinking about it, it's odd that our graduate students are not required to have any training in teaching in my department, even though we will probably spend our lives teaching if we make a success of our careers.

Or, perhaps, the 90-minute classes every day were simply too much for all of us, regardless of technique? That and the steaming summer heat hardly helped. And most of my students seemed to be taking a science class with a lab as well as my class; some of them probably came to opera to "relax."

Yet the students seemed to enjoy the class more as the semester went on. A brief poll suggested that their favorite opera was Carmen; the least favorite was Das Rheingold, although Wagner had some ardent defenders. Don Giovanni and Otello also had a number of admirers. I hardly expected - even though I was delighted - that one student would declare Wozzeck to be his favorite opera.

At the final, though, a number of the students thanked me for teaching the class. They seemed to have enjoyed it; maybe this required course stopped feeling like a chore and became informative and fun? It's hard to know, but I'd like to think the course transcended the inherent evils of the requirement system and became meaningful.

Meanwhile, I'm going to read more about teaching techniques. Whatever the truth of the matter, there's always room for improvement.