Pedagogy

I found this hysterical and very effective instructional video over at FlautoNP's blog. Thank you, FlautoNP!





The ways we learn! I have always been a fan of outrageous teaching and made every effort, in my time, to underscore even the most arid of facts with some sort of demented presentation. Of course, there is only so much one can do with the French subjunctive, although I think collecting near-rotten fruits and vegetables for the students to throw in their inevitable frustration is an idea not without merit.

Adults learning a foreign language are very inhibited -- unwilling to throw caution (not to mention near-rotten fruits and vegetables) to the wind and make mistakes. The Effortlessly Poopy and Fluent Child is forever touted as the paradigm for the Tied-Up-In-Knots and Constipated Adult. Unleash that inner child, learning specialists cry, and language acquisition will have a recuperative and restorative effect (not unlike some revolutionary scheme for toilet training).

Those wacky learning specialists!

The idea, of course, is to trick the staid adult into risking just a little mimicry of the Crazy Educator in the hope that the over-the-top instruction would draw them out precisely to the point of what is correct.

Teaching language was always fun -- except when it was tedious, and even then, I [hope I] never let the tedium show. "Teaching" literature and a more enlightened form of contemplation, the critical essay, however, was perilous and nearly always tedious.



No, not so much tedium -- more like being flailed alive.



Like many people, I love En attendant Godot, Waiting for Godot. Beckett gives me shivers of delight, frissons of recognition. For some reason, we think his work is easily accessible and we offer it up on platters to new literature students, mint jelly on the side.



Class discussion of the play was abysmal. This being my first go with "teaching" literature at the university, and given my incurable optimism, I had done minimal direction of the discussions, vowing instead to follow my fearless students anywhere. Yes, I forgot that they were hopelessly constipated.



They talked about homeless people. Yes, Didi and Gogo served as exemplum of this "scourge taking over our cities and parks... " (I bought Maalox.)



Then, they decided to talk about the role of desire. (I contemplated a purchase of champagne.) However, this quickly devolved into a discussion of how brave it was for Beckett to present such openly gay characters. (I rolled a few joints, drank some more Maalox.)

What's the best way to "teach" Beckett's En attendant Godot? Certainly not by letting go of the reins and liberating student discussion! The next semester, I relied heavily on performance value -- we watched three different theatre presentations, we read it aloud as a class, not permitting anyone to fall behind in either reading or understanding (jusqu'à un certain niveau). They began to know Estragon et Vladimir, Pozzo et Lucky, understand the oblique references, and be comfortable in the silence of what they could not know.

I was psyched. The final papers were about to burn a hole in my briefcase. I pulled them out, stacked them neatly on my cleared dining room table, grabbed a Diet Coke. Found an ink pen, got a fresh legal pad. Deep breath of excitement.

"Vladimir and Estragon are two homosexual homeless men..."

How do I get in touch with this Mad German Doctor Dude?
In the interim, I find great comfort with the Parisian Sock: