A lot of what Bernard L. Schwartz said about audience awareness last week resonated with me. He mentioned the significance of both transmission and reception in the communication act, stressing the latter as being perhaps too often overlooked. Listening attentively is a skill; hearing what the speaker intends you to hear is also a skill.
As teachers, we’re usually concerned with both transmission and reception; we want to make our presentations clear, our questions thought-provoking, our assignments challenging, and our evaluation encouraging. In many ways, teaching is a performance, and to deliver it effectively we work on our presentation skills. In all this, of course, we conceive of our students as audience: we hope they would receive what we have transmitted or respond to what we have posed as a question. And, there is usually no delay in learning how our message got across. As soon as we hear, read, or simply see their responses, we know whether the message went through or got lost in translation.
As much as I enjoy the performative side of teaching, I think there is a difference between treating students as audience or interlocutors. The word ‘interlocutor’ has interesting etymology; it comes from Latin interloqui, which means “to speak between.” It implies active engagement in dialogue, but even more perhaps – the initiation of dialogue. When students write papers or give oral presentations, they still follow our prompts. They want to succeed, impress their teachers and fellow students, get a good grade, right? In all this, they are still living up to the expectations of others.
I wonder if by asking them to create their own expectations (not without good models, of course) – by preparing a sample assignment or facilitating a discussion on a topic of their choice—we can hope for a more dynamic learning environment. We’ll be creating a new context for learning critical thinking, mastery of the material, and presentation skills. In this sense, I think, blogging provides a great medium for experiencing interlocution. But we’ll also be asking them to assume responsibility that comes with authority. A cliché? I agree, but I am thinking of those times when students, sometimes unwittingly, make offensive comments. When we call their attention to that, they usually smile or blush and apologize (they can also try to justify their thinking and ignite an argument). What I see in this is an attempt to hide experience behind innocence. “I’m just a student. I can be excused,” they seem to be saying. Well, I wonder, can we offer them a role other than “just a student” and do so in a non-punitive way?
I think Olga captured beautifully the idea of conversation as mutual engagement and enrichment. This is something I would also like to promote more and more through my own teaching. The German philosopher, Hans Georg Gadamer talks about conversation as life-praxis in his most important book,Truth and Method. He describes the act of reading as a conversation with the book, in terms of horizons of expectations: the reader develops horizons of expectations, which will always be altered in some way through the reading process. The idea is that as you read along, you alter your expectations for the book, you alter your views on the world, and, in a way, you change your self. Here it goes: reading as a life-changing experience!
And I think teaching is just such a life-changing experience as well. Has always been for me, and I agree with Mr. Bernard L. Schwartz, who charmed and impressed me too last week: it takes a lot of listening and a deep sense of shared humanity.